Cages
by Inaniloquently
Summary: Two years since Elvis' death and a year since Molly's marriage fell a part, Georgie and Molly finally meet again.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer

 _Our Girl_ (and the characters, storylines and ideas related to them) belong to writers and any other relevant Copy Right owners. This story has not been written for any profit and no infringement is intended.

* * *

 _Author Note_

 _This story was originally a one-shot exercise in exorcism of the Captain James from Season Three and everything that happened in Bangladesh. Because, well just because._

 _The Maya Angelou poem very much inspired this because I think it explains, particularly in the last two verses, how people can trap themselves in an emotional cage of their own making and fail to escape, even when the door of the cage has been left open. That's pretty much the situation that TG's left his characters in and here's the solution I'd rather like to see play out._

 _Song for this, if you want one,_ _ **Silhouette – Aquilo**_ _. I was going to go with_ _ **You There – Aquilo**_ _, but that seemed a bit tongue-in-cheek even for me._

 _Knower Of Roads, for a dose of fluff, will be updated this weekend, Mea Culpa, for a dose of angst, possibly next week but it depends on how much time I have._

* * *

 **Chapter One**

 _A free bird leaps_

 _on the back of the wind_

 _and floats downstream_

 _till the current ends_

 _and dips his wing_

 _in the orange sun rays_

 _._

 _._

 _But a bird that stalks_

 _down his narrow cage_

 _can seldom see through_

 _his bars of rage_

 _his wings are clipped and_

 _his feet are tied_

 _so he opens his throat to sing._

 _._

 _._

 _The caged bird sings_

 _with a fearful trill_

 _of things unknown_

 _but longed for still_

 _and his tune is heard_

 _on the distant hill_

 _for the caged bird_

 _sings of freedom._

 _._

 _._

 _The free bird thinks of another breeze_

 _and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees_

 _and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn_

 _and he names the sky his own_

 _._

 _._

 _But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams_

 _his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream_

 _his wings are clipped and his feet are tied_

 _so he opens his throat to sing._

 _._

 _._

 _The caged bird sings_

 _with a fearful trill_

 _of things unknown_

 _but longed for still_

 _and his tune is heard_

 _on the distant hill_

 _for the caged bird_

 _sings of freedom._

 _._

 _._

 _Caged Bird - Maya Angelou_

* * *

 **Woodcock Hill Cemetery, wood land burials area, Rickmansworth, Herts, 21st September 2019**

"Did you know, in his death letter to his parents he told them he wanted to be buried under a birch tree. Said it was because they were a symbol of new beginnings."

Her hand clenching around the corner of the picnic rug she was sitting on, Molly kept her eyes fixed on the thriving beech sapling in front of her instead of the slim camo clad legs in the periphery of her vision.

"He told me it was because it was the only tree he could think of when he booked his plot and that he hoped it might give his parent some comfort. He thought using his body to feed a tree was funny. Black humoured, git. Charles was horrified. I kind of got it, though."

"I never knew he'd even thought to pre-arrange a funeral. Wasn't like him at all."

"It wasn't. Charles badgered him into sorting it out, while he was sorting out ours. Elvis thought it was hilarious that he was planning our last resting place at our ages. He got it when Charles said it was kinder for who we left behind to make the arrangements, than making no plans at all.

"Charles choose Westcombe Hill in Somerset for us, and natural burial. Elvis copied to but choose here, close to Hoddesdon, for his parents. "It's not like I'll ever get the use of Westcombe Hill, now is it? So, I may as well enjoy this place. "Two days after the second anniversary of losing him…I thought it was a safe bet I'd be left alone. No bumping into anyone…unfortunate. Yet here you are. What do you want, Georgie?"

"I was looking for you. I phoned your flat mate, she said you'd be here."

Molly raised her eyes to look at her former friend, and her expression was less than friendly, unsurprisingly.

"There's no way you told her who you were, otherwise Jacs would have told you to fuck off and leave me alone, the way I want you to fuck off and leave me alone now."

Georgie tucked her trembling hands behind her back nervously. For the first time since she'd made the decision to track Molly down, Georgie was having doubts as she tried to hold eye contact under the weight of Molly's steady, excruciatingly accusing stare.

"Molly–"

"How'd you even get my phone number. I know Charles doesn't have it, I made sure."

"A friend who works in HR at Army HQ got it for me. I needed to talk to you."

Molly eyebrows rose impressively slowly, each movement a calculated expression of her growing disbelief that Georgie would have the audacity to show her face, never mind need something.

"You lost any right to need anything from me the night you walked into my husband's billet in barracks and shagged him while we were still married. I have nothin' that I want to say to you."

"Look, can I sit?"

There was a flash of something dangerously like fury in Molly large, green eyes, which disappeared as fast as it appeared as her expression settled into a calm mask. Her tone, when she next spoke, was cool and polite and eerily detached from strength the earlier emotion.

"No. I'm going, I can spend time with Elvis another time. I'll leave the picnic blanket. It actually belongs to Charles' mother. You know, _my_ former mother-in-law. Emphasis on the former."

Georgie had to fight to keep her face calm while she inwardly cringed.

"I packed such random shit when I moved out. Was in a bit of a hurray. He can return it when he next sees her."

"I haven't seen Charles since the hospital after the river in Bangladesh. I thought you knew that?"

Molly's dark lashes fan down as she shut her eyes for a second, and took a deep breath. When they opened again, her expression was carefully neutral, eyes on fire again.

"I haven't seen him since he left for Bangladesh. In fact, our last conversation was a phone call when he discussed what furniture I should take as calm as you'd order a takeaway pizza. But then, he chose the tour to Bangladesh over a medical discharge and any hopes I had of saving our marriage, so I wasn't exactly surprised.

"Keep the blanket, or don't. You didn't manage to keep my husband, consider it a consolation prize. I don't ever want to see you again, Georgie. _Ever_."

Molly climbed to her feet, and brushed down her camo clad legs calmly, before turning her back on Georgie as she started to walk away.

When Georgie made to grab her arm to stop her, with a rushed call of, "Molly, please!"

Molly flung her hand off with some force, then stepped away, moving behind the small sapling she'd been sat besides, using the six-foot, thin branched tree as a sort of barrier.

"Molly, please what. Please forgive me? Please it was all a mistake? Please I didn't mean to put a bomb under your marriage and explode it? Please, what, Georgie. What the fuck else could you want to ask me for that you haven't already taken from me?"

Georgie looked Molly straight in the eyes and could see the building wall of remembered pain she was constructing for protection. She had to stop herself from retreating in the face of it, guilty accusation shouting loudly inside her own head, without any that Molly might legitimately decide to throw at her.

Georgie repeated to herself the conversation she'd had in the mirror that morning. That she'd have only one opportunity to talk, and this was it. That she owed Molly this conversation, even if she didn't want to hear it. That she deserved anything that Molly wanted to say, however much it stung. Finally, that she needed to man-up. Letting Molly leave would be the easy choice. Making her stay was the right one.

"It wasn't a mistake in the moment when I decided to go to his room. Wasn't a mistake the day after either."

When Molly physically flinched, Georgie automatically wanted to reach offer comfort. To reassure her that it was going to be okay. She didn't, of course, because she'd killed their friendship dead, and it was her words that were making her flinch in the first place, however much she needed to say them.

"It _was_ a mistake when he woke up in the hospital with me by his bedside and not you, and cried because of it. That's when he woke up to what we'd done, and hated himself for it."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you need to know how he felt. That he had regrets."

"He had regrets, but not _you_." Molly said, voice not entirely steady.

"Yes." At this point, honest was all that Georgie had left to give Molly, so she gave it, brutally. "I won't lie, yes."

"How noble of you." Molly spat, hands clenched, body language dangerous. "He called out for me in the hospital after Belize."

"He cried out for in the jungle in Belize, too." Georgie replied softly, trying to show that she agreed with Molly's unspoken, painful point, that Charles had wanted his wife when it mattered, not her.

"Didn't stop him texting you from Headley months later, though did it." Molly replied, taking another step backwards, as though trying to distance herself from the subject.

It was Georgie's turn to close her eyes briefly, because the expression of naked pain on Molly's face was too much to bear.

"I got an email from Colonel Beck, asking why Charles hadn't responded to correspondence about a promotional panel he wanted him to attend. He'd been very distant, defensive…I got upset…suspicious and checked his phone."

Georgie opened her eyes again, taking in Molly's expression which was distant suddenly, the emotion stripped out.

"You never replied, I supposed I should thank you for that much. Helped me realise what he was doing, why he was avoiding the opportunity of promotion. He was trying to make sure he stayed with you, wasn't he?"

"I don't know anything about that. Honestly, Molly. When he was feverish in the jungle, we talked about Elvis. He said he blamed himself for his death, talked about us being bonded because of it. Said you were both struggling at home that his feelings had perhaps crossed a line…

"It opened the wounds all over again, like the loss was fresh. Afterwards, when he was Headley, I couldn't face talking to him, I was too busy holding myself together–"

"Selfish, both of you." Molly said, suddenly full of fire again. "We all lost Elvis. He was a like a big brother to me. An irritating, bugs the tits off you, pain in the bum of a big brother but one who you can't help loving with your whole bloody heart despite his piss taking ways. Then he was gone, and my husband and my best mate with him.

"I lost all of you, one at a time, but you both had to make the loss about you, like it was some sort of competition of who broke more because he died. Fuck sake, Elvis would have hated all of it."

"More people than you two lost Elvis. I lost him, his parents lost him, his daughter lost him, Sam lost him. Why is your pain so much more important than theirs? I'm not gonna stand here and let you use his loss as your justification for sleeping with my husband or tell me how it was his for sleeping with you. You both sent my whole life to shit and there is no justification for that I want to hear!"

They stared at each other, the minutes heavy with silence as Georgie struggled to get control of her breathing suddenly. Her efforts only seemed to annoy Molly more.

"I don't want your tears, Georgie, they mean shit to me so knock it off."

Georgie wiped her hand across her face and it came away wet.

"Anyway, you said you haven't seen him since the hospital, so what are you here to tell me? That your magic moment in Bangladesh, wasn't so magical after all? What do you want me to say: boo-hoo, poor Georgie?" Molly shook her head dismissively. "You know what, I don't even care. I've stayed and listened longer than I should have, I'm goin' now."

Molly turned her back on Georgie again and began to walk away.

"He changed platoons after, so never came back to Two Section. I'll be honest, at the time, I'd hoped he would. Been expecting it, even."

Molly stopped walking, the muscles in her back tight with strain.

"You hoped he would? So, you could get back to what you started in Bangladesh?" Molly asked, her back still turned to Georgie.

"Will it make you hate me any more if I say that _yes_ , that was what I was thinking at the time."

Molly turned around again, eyes hard, green chips of determination compared to Georgie's that were still wet with more tears.

"I've given you too much emotional head-space already." Molly said dismissively, but there was a hitch in her breath before she spoke again that suggested she was more effected by the conversation than she wanted to let on. "You don't deserve anymore of me than I've already lost."

"For fuck sake, Molly. We both had PTSD and were both denying it. Why can't you see that and bend a little and listen to what I'm trying to say to you."

Molly's expression remained implacable and immutably closed. She had her emotional armour on tightly. Outwardly hard-as-nails, inwardly crumbling. Neither showed on her face.

Georgie rushed on, scared that Molly would leave and her last opportunity would be lost.

"I tried to get in contact with him after, he never responded. Did some digging, trying to find out where he was and found out that he'd requested a transfer. He chose to walk away. I didn't cope well with that. I had to speak to someone about it–"

"So, you spoke to Brains, dragged him into the drama."

"He told you?" Georgie asked, sounding appalled.

"How else did you think I knew about you two heating up the sheets in Bangladesh. I told you haven't spoken to Charles since that last call. Of course, Brains spoke to me, they were my Section before they were ever, yours. He was worried I didn't know. Didn't know what to do or think.

"He also took it mean it was your fault they lost their C.O. Charles never bothered to say goodbye to Two Section either. Another shit storm he left behind him."

"I lost them, too. They never looked at me the same after."

"What, did you think he'd not talk to them about it? You dumped that bomb on him and thought he'd not _need_ to discuss it?" Molly said, like she was talking to a rather slow, naive child.

"I wasn't thinking about very much at all except I needed to speak to someone about it. Never considered it would blow up in my face with their censure."

"What, you thought they'd slap you on the back and celebrate you as one of the lads because you banged an Officer?"

"Don't be crass, Molly."

"Don't be stupid, _Georgie_ , and don't under estimate how much what you did cost me. Those boys were at my wedding. Saw the happy start of what you helped break.

"Anyway, you're not being fair there. They'd have let it go eventually if you'd stuck around. He left them, too. But you did a Charles, and bolted, didn't you?"

"Yes, back to Preston. Regimental duties again. I hit rock bottom after that, couldn't have gone any lower if I tried."

Molly unexpectantly took a step closer, her voice lower, softer. "But you did hit lower. The pills. Your mum called me after. She didn't know how things were between us at that point."

"She never told me."

"She was desperate. I told her I thought you had PTSD and told her who to speak to at Regimental HQ to get you the help you needed."

"I never knew."

"Why would you need to? I was only doing my job."

"The way I failed to after he told me in the jungle that he couldn't function at home anymore and was struggling at work as well."

"I never reported it either, and knew about it longer. He refused to get help. Said he was worried it would affect his career. I think he was ashamed he was suffering the way he was, because that's not supposed to happen to a good officer, is it? In the end I couldn't expose his struggles to the world like that. Loved him too much. I needed it to be his decision.

"Didn't matter in the end, though did it? Just like with Rebecca, he picked the Army over me because I wasn't enough for him when it came to a choice."

"You're so wrong. He got help after Bangladesh. Went to Beck and told him everything. He's a Major now, working between Pirbright and Sandhurst training officers. Also took on a welfare role, working with service personnel with PTSD."

"If you haven't spoken to him since, how do you know all this?"

"Spanner from Elvis's old team and Blue the new Section Commander. They're still in contact. I asked after him."

"And you?"

"You mean after the pills? Counselling, regimental duties, more counselling, then a bit more. I'm getting my head straight slowly.

"He's doing even better, has been cleared for active duties, but he's decided to stay with his training role."

Georgie was confused to see the flash of pain cross Molly's face. This was good news she was giving her surely, so why… Then Molly's expression went blank completely, even more closed off than before.

"Well, I'm glad you're both doing so well after you blew my life to bits. Not sure why you felt the need to track me down and let me know about it, though."

"That's not fair-"

"Isn't it?"

Georgie indicated the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps badge on Molly's beret. "Seems you're moving on and up as well."

"A year of dealing with being without a husband who'd promised that I was the last thing he wanted to see, who then goes and shags his best-friend's fiancé, tends to mean you have to keep busy to keep your shit together. My C.O had been bugging me to aim higher, and it turns out I'm not quite as thick as I thought I was. I'm based up at BCU in Birmingham, for future reference, should you decide to stalk me again. If you could manage to stay away, I'd be grateful."

Molly turned her back again, more than ready to leave this time.

"I'm happy for you!" Georgie called out, being deliberately goady this time both in tone and choice of words. It worked, Molly swung around again and stormed back towards where Georgie was standing.

"I don't want or need your praise!" she snapped.

"Okay, but can I ask you one thing?"

"I doubt it would stop you even if I said no."

"Are you happy? Over him?"

"Yes."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't care!"

"I think you're doing what you do best–surviving."

"How would you know anything about me?"

"We were friends once."

"Yeah, once. Try to remember that next time you think you're an expert on me anymore."

"He's the same. Surviving, just like you."

"And I _still_ don't care!"

"Then why haven't you sent divorce papers?"

"How the hell would you know that?"

"Spanner. They're very close these days. The connection he I had after Elvis was something we both needed, but wasn't healthy. I see that now. But he still needed one. Well, they both did. As you said, more people than us lost Elvis.

"He told Spanner that he dreading the day you send him divorce papers because that will mean it finally over between you."

"It would seem he's picked a bloke with a bloody big mouth as a new bestie."

"Spanner only wants him to be happy, and he always was a bit chatty after a few too many malt whiskies. I might have exploited that for good reasons."

"He's been with nobody else since Bangladesh, Molly."

"The one he had during Bangladesh was one to many." Molly replied sarcastically.

"Come on, Molly. You're stronger than that. You're letting your insecurities talk for you now."

"Fuck you, Georgie." Molly muttered, turning away again.

" _You_ told him your relationship needed put out of its misery. You, Molly."

"I also told him to leave me or get help, before Belize, and still stayed afterwards and tried to fight for my marriage despite the threat. I stopped fighting when I found the texts he kept sending you and about the promotions board.

"He left me first, emotionally and then physically each and every time he chose running off on tour to avoid the problems at home.

"I had a living breathing husband and it felt like he'd died. Even when he was right in front of me, I was grieving for a living man. No matter what I did, he shut me out and kept me shut out. Don't you dare try to say this was my fault."

"It wasn't his fault, or yours. We were both unwell after Elvis died."

"Maybe, maybe not. You both still made choices that hurt people around you. That takes makin' a decision. PTSD didn't take away your free will."

"It does distort the reality around those decisions, though. I know you have extra training in this. I know how hard you tried to help him before it all went to shit."

"I told you before, more than just you and him lost Elvis. WE all lost him, and none of the rest of us looked outside of our marriages to shag our way back to happiness."

"I know, and I'm not trying to excuse it."

"Aren't you?"

"I can't excuse it, or say sorry enough times to fix it. We both got so bloody lost. I look back on everything that happened now and don't recognise myself anymore.

"Elvis would have been so angry with us if he could have seen it all. That's maybe the worst part. He loved you so much, Molly. Charles, too. You were a second family to him."

"None of it matters now. You can't go back." Molly said, her voice heavy with a ringing sort of finality.

"I know."

Molly seemed to paused for a moment, as though contemplating her text words, then asked carefully, "What about you, now?"

Georgie looked startled for a second, then smiled tentatively. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Asking about me. It's not how I saw this conversation going."

"How did you see it?"

"I thought I might need a visit to the dentist, after your hand met my face and punched my lights out…"

"Not saying I never thought about it at times. But it's not who I am anymore. I said before, you don't deserve anymore headspace than I've already given you."

"Okay, I understand. To answer your early question. I'm leaving the Army. Tomorrow is my last day in uniform. Got myself a contract with Médecins Sans Frontières in Kenya for a year. After that – who knows?"

"I wish you well, Georgie. Don't want to ever see you again, but holding onto this negativity ain't good for me, so I do genuinely wish you well as much as I'm able to and I'm leavin' now."

George put her hand into her combat trouser pocket and pulled out a piece of paper.

"You asked me why I came looking for you. This is why." She held the paper out to Molly. "This is for you. It's his address in Guildford. He's been living there since you sold your house in Bath and got posted to Aldershot."

"I don't want it."

"It isn't over for him – what you both had."

Georgie extended the paper towards Molly again, but she didn't reach for it.

"Please, Molly, take it! You don't need to do anything with it. Could even burn it, or make some other grand gesture out of destroying it to show you really have the closure you're working so hard to convince me you have."

"You're a bitch."

"Maybe, but like I said, I got my head into such a mess after Elvis, that I'm not really sure I know who or what I really am anymore."

"And you think I should care?"

"It doesn't really matter if you care or not. It does matter that you're trying to change the subject." Georgie stretched out towards Molly with the piece of paper again.

"You can avoid this, or you could take it and try to move forward in different way. One of you has to make the first move. It won't be him, he's too scared he'll hurt you again by pushing his way back in to your life uninvited."

"Spanner again?"

"Yes, well, he's quite the Chatty-Cathy when he wants something to happen as much as this. I'm pretty sure he let me get him drunk because it suited his agenda."

"Did you contact him, or did he contact you?" Molly asked, her arms crossed over her chest defensively, but her eyes showing a hint of vulnerability.

"Spanner contacted me, but I recognised it as the opportunity to make this conversation happen. Look, I know it's never going to be enough. I know I torpedoed your life and I know nothing I do will fix my part in that, but I wanted you to know it is fixable if you're brave enough to make the first move.

"Please, Molly, please take the paper." Georgie took a step closer, reached down and placed it into Molly's hand. When her fingers slowly closed around it, crumbling it into a ball Georgie was worried she was going to throw it back at her for a moment.

They stood and stared at each other for a heavy moment, brown eyes on green. Molly took a step back, but to the relief of Georgie's thumping heart, kept her fingers closed around the paper with Charles' home address. She'd succeeded, but Georgie recognised this moment for what it was. Their final goodbye.

"I've got to get back. Got the drive to do, and I'm on shift at eight." Molly took another step backwards.

Georgie nodded with a careful smile. She'd said what she'd come to say. There was nothing else to do now but awkward goodbyes. She bent down to scoop up the blanket.

"No, it' okay. You use it. The grass is wet and it's a bit shit to sit on if you you're going to stay with him." Molly indicated the ground with her hand and a sad smile. "He'd get grumpy with me if I let you get a wet behind."

"Thank you, Molly and I am so–"

Molly stopped her with a rise of her hand. "Bye, Georgie."

Then turned and walked back down the grass path towards the carpark.

Georgie knelt down on the blanket and contemplate the small tree in front of her with damp eyes.

"I bet you're up in heaven, or wherever we go afterwards, pissing yourself laughing at me sitting here stressing out about what to say to a straggly little tree. Did you think about that when you picked this option for your funeral? For fucks sake, Elvis. I really believe you were taking the piss even then."

She stroked the tree trunk gently, needing to touch something to ground herself.

"I'm sorry I haven't been to see you since the funeral. I've been a bit busy missing you, falling apart and royally fucking up my life. I know you'd be bloody furious with me about that, but I was bloody furious with you about leaving me for a while. So, I guess fairs fair."

Two fat tears trailed down her cheeks, and she wiped them away impatiently with the back of her hand. More tears followed.

"I'm here now, and I wanted to tell you I'm doing better. Not exactly good, but better.

"I've made such a mess of things, Elvis, got lost in a very dark place. Helped Charles fuck up his marriage, lost Molly's friendship, obviously. Lost the trust and respect of my section. Lost myself.

"It took me most of this year to understand what was going on in my own head, then the rest of the year to find the courage to track down Molly and speak to her again.

"I didn't for one-minute think it would happen here, with you. Imagined it in some Mess hall or at her flat, if she'd even have let me through the door in the first place.

"But I'm glad it was here with you." The tears were coming faster now and rapid heading towards audible sobs. "I should have come sooner, sorry about that, too, but I miss you so fucking much, and the thought of returning here just made the fact that you're really gone…too real, I guess.

"Maybe you're annoyed with me, or maybe not. Or maybe I'm losing my last marble yammering away to a stupid tree, that has nothing whatsoever to do with what your life meant, beyond you liking to take the piss out of it.

"But you always had the bigger, most forgiving heart out of the two of us, so I think if you can see me, you won't stay mad for long. So, if it's okay I'm just going to lie here a while with you. Okay? Then I need to head home and pack for Kenya.

"I know. I can hear you already: For fucks sake, George, why Kenya after last time…"

ooOOoo

Molly waited behind the cover of the more mature trees that divided the forest burial area, from the more traditional rows of standing stones, holding formal words and loving messages. She waited for longer then she meant to initially, and perhaps longer than she should as she watched Georgie chat to, cry with and then finally fall asleep underneath the straggly little tree who's only response was to move gently in the breeze and be there as a focus for her words.

Time ran slowly passed, until there was not enough left for her to be able stay without risking being late for duty. So, she left, but the balled-up piece of paper that Georgie had worked so hard to get her to accept was still in her hands when she drove away.


	2. Chapter 2

Authors Note

 _I absolutely, at no point, meant this to be a multichapter story and, to be honest, I'm more than a little bit bat-shit to be attempting three stories at once. Molly had stuff to say, and I can't let the CJ/G thing lie, so what they hey, on we go…_

 _Songs, because I blame them for helping my brain to create this, are given below if you want should be findable on YouTube, definitely available on Apple Music: Bad Dreams – Faouzia, So Far - Ólafur Arnalds, Lost Without You – Freya Ridings, Share Your Air – Kate Miller-Heidke, Concrete Angel -_ _The Strange Familiar, Let It All Go – Rhodes & Birdy_

* * *

 _The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief is only a shadow compared with the pain of never risking love. Hilary Stanton Zunin_

* * *

 _ **Chapter Two**_

Both where just off night-shift and both should have been in their beds. Instead they were sitting on the floor on a fluffy rug in front of a cold wood-burner. Cross-legged, they faced each other beside a half-empty bottle of wine and two empty wine glasses which were sitting on the hearth. A crumpled ball of paper was sitting in the middle of the rug in the no-man's-land in between them and was the absolute focus of both of their attentions.

"So, let me get this right. It was Combat Barbie, a.k.a Calamity Lane that called looking for you yesterday?"

"Yes, and you might want to think about who you're giving information to the next time a woman with a breathy Manchester accent phones up. Just sayin', Jacs." Molly scolded.

"Duly noted." Jackie replied with a mock salute.

"And I told you step calling her that."

"As I recall, you called her a lot worse and more than once."

Molly grimaced. The memory of just how angry she'd been with Georgie, him, herself and the world in general after Brains had called her and _told_ her was not a happy one.

Afterwards, getting her head into a calmer space had taken a lot of time. Well, time and the counselling which Jackie had badgered –otherwise known as bugged her tits off–until she agreed to try attending. Jackie had been right, it had helped her find what her counsellor called a more balanced and healing view. Molly had considered it to be a step towards getting her nut back into a straight place.

The kind of self-reflection that the counsellor had expected from Molly hadn't come easily. Her conclusions, after too many hours in an office with a too squashy chair, scary fish tank and carefully expressionless counsellor, were that it took two to break and marriage. Well three, if you included Georgie. On her worst days, Georgie had been the villainess. On her better days he had been to blame. When Molly had accepted the truth of their situation; they had both been to blame. Georgie was just a symptom of the problems in their marriage.

Until him, she'd spent a lifetime to date being self-contained, and self-reliant but she had let him in, willingly. In the beginning, her trust and confidence in that love and in him had been absolute. At the end, it had dissolved into nothing but lingering, protracted pain.

Having a stranger ask her to expose herself and that pain to scrutiny and discussion was fucking unbearable, to put it bluntly. But she done it, exposed her vulnerabilities again and again because, in the end, anything was better than the emotional turmoil she'd been unable to escape from by herself.

Georgie popping up again was making Moly feel the same shaky, emotional uncertainty again, a she wasn't grateful for the wobble it was causing her to have about some of her perceptions and decisions following the mess that preceded her rapid, silent and very, very final exit from their marriage.

"Well, I'm all about moving on, and all that shit. Georgie or Lane will do."

Jackie's response was an unladylike snort of laughter. "Whatever you want, Molls. I still prefer Combat Barbie. I think we need more wine and snacks before we deal with the enormous, paper elephant in the room."

Jackie re-filled both their glass before heading to the kitchen to dispose of the now empty wine bottle just as the doorbell rang.

"Hah! I do believe that will be the snack portion of this morning's entertainment. I'll get the pizza. I hope it's the same delivery guy as before, he was kind of fit." Jackie said, heading to the front and leaving Molly with her churning thoughts.

After leaving their house in Bath, Molly had–metaphorically speaking– salted the ground, deliberating cutting all ties so there was no way back, and nothing from which pathetic hope might spring. She'd been determined that she would not be the same sort of fool that her mother had been over again with her feckless father. She was ruthlessly thorough.

Joint account cards, were left behind, all mail was redirected, joint bills were paid to date and her name removed, mobile number changed, contact list deleted, an estate agent's contract and contact details were waiting for him when he returned from tour. Her keys were posted through the door and would have been the first thing he'd have come back to when he arrived home.

Anything they had bought together, she left, despite his encouragement to take anything she needed. She walked out of the door with the sum total of whatever she walked into relationship with, and nothing more.

She'd left her wedding dress hanging in the wardrobe and her engagement and wedding carefully place in her jewellery box and put away. All three left as silent witness to the death of a marriage that had meant everything to them both once.

Her family where told nothing except that it was over and her contact details where not to be shared, period. If he contacted them, she didn't want to know. If they tried to talk about it, she left the room. No discussion, no future, end of subject. It was to be as if it had never happened.

A three-month tour to the Syria/Turkey border working with refugees followed quickly and had been lucky to be deployed with Jacs on the same tour. In that way she had exited her marriage and the country with as much speed as she could manage

That first night, she had turned up at Jackie's flat door with a taxi full of belongings and the whole sad story had tumble out to her best friend.

On tour, under Jackie's watchful gaze, Molly had been a whirling dervish of activity during the first month. Jackie had been ready and waiting when Molly eventually ran out of energy to run from her pain and finally collapsed in a sobbing mess in her friend's open arms. They'd been inseparable ever since. A fact for which Molly was eternally grateful.

Jackie decreed Molly need to keep busy, Molly agreed and threw herself into the career progression her C.O. had been pushing her towards. A Corporal stripe followed for them both. Studying for exams which Molly had started the year before yielded qualifications that Molly never believed she'd hold.

A house-share with Jacs in Aldershot, successful driving lessons and investment her first car, and another three-month tour in Afghanistan followed. Then they both came up with the master plan for the next couple of years of their lives after visit to Jackie's family in Nuneaton; applications for nurse training at the Defence School of Healthcare Education at Edgbaston Birmingham.

Much to the crowing delight of their CO, both where successful which resulted in their current situation, QARANC cap badges for them both and another house share in a higgity piggity little terrace cottage on the outskirts of Birmingham. Within all of that, a year had raced by since she walked away from her marriage with her head mostly held high and her heart hardened and closed for her own protection. Throughout it all Molly had felt nothing but hollow.

Jackie reappeared with the pizza box and two plates.

"Should I get another bottle of wine?"

"Not unless you want me to end up face down in the pizza." Molly replied wryly. "Last night was a bastard of a shift, I was on the go the whole time."

"I guess you're right. Look at us being grownups, when did that bloody happen?"

Jackie sat back down on the rug with a tired groan and passed a plate loaded with pizza to Molly.

"What was it you said to me, back when we first moved in together? Never too much and never alone?" Molly replied, repeating Jackie's words to her about the temptation to get frequently plastered just to escape the shit-storm that her life had become.

"Yeah, yeah. Wise words. No bloody idea who said them though." Jackie replied with a snort of mirth.

They ate a slice of pizza each in silence. By the time a second slice and most of the wine had disappeared, Molly kept finding her gaze straying back to the ball of paper. Jackie took the initiative in the end by setting their plates and glass to the side and laying down with her head affectionately in Molly's lap.

"So where is he now?"

"I'm not sure you're going to like the answer to that." Molly replied. "Matt's going to be even less thrilled."

"Not a Pirbright? You're shitting me!"

"No, apparently I'm not. She said he sought help, got promoted to Major and took a training role. Officer training between Pirbright and Sandhurst. Was even cleared for active deployment, but he decided to stay UK based."

"Everything you asked him to do before the split." Jackie replied, reaching up to squeeze Molly's hand comfortingly.

"Yes."

"That's got to sting." Jackie tipped her head back, to study Molly's expression with worried eyes.

"I'm not gonna lie. It does."

"I'm sorry."

"Why? Wasn't your fault, was it?"

"You're right, Matt is going to have a canary. Fuck sake, I'm how I am going tell him?"

Matt Geddings, Molly's former Corporal from Basic Training and one of Jackie's more ill-advised plans for Molly's recovery. When Molly had mention her former crush while looking through old photos from both their Basic Training days, Jackie had formed a plan. Using her considerable network of Army friends, she'd finagled an invitation to a reunion weekend of Matts former platoon from Afgan. The two Medic from which Jackie happened to know.

Getting Molly to agree to a weekend away had been easy enough, especially since she kept quiet about who'd be at the same hotel. In the end mission 'Romantic Attachment' had been a howling failure, resulting in Molly having strongly worded conversation with Jackie to say that she didn't appreciate having her former crush dropped on her unannounced, however well-intentioned Jackie had been, and that the spark just wasn't there anyway.

Jackie's response had been, thank fuck. Since the spark definitely was there for her, and would it be an unforgivable breach of best friend code to go there? Molly sent her friend on her way with an encouraging grin and a silent sigh of relief because she she'd known–without being able to openly admit it-that she just wasn't ready for another relationship.

Six months on and Jackie's happy accident had developed into a solid relationship and a male best friend for Molly who'd filled a hole that Smurf's death left empty.

Matt, now Sergeant Geddings, was still a trainer at Pirbright, and knew the broad strokes of the breakdown of her marriage to an officer but not the finer sordid details.

"Is it unfair of me to ask, how could he not know?" Molly asked.

"You didn't know, did you? I didn't know, why would he?"

"I don't know, doesn't he discuss work with you?"

"Yes, but it's not like I ask him to pull out an org chart and discuss his COC as pillow talk, and Pirbright is a bloody large army base. James also isn't exactly an unusual name. Why would he connect the dots?"

"I suppose. I'll leave you to have that conversation, though."

"Cheers for that."

Jackie poked the crumbled ball of paper with her toe.

"Where is he living then?"

"She said Guildford."

"Wow, that's close to where we were staying… Wait what do you mean, she said? You haven't even looked at the address, have you?"

"No, but it doesn't change anything."

Molly recognised Jackie's express as the one she pulled when she wanted to say more, but shouldn't or couldn't.

"She said she was at his hospital bedside after the river incident. After they'd…"

"Shagged, in barracks. Nothing inappropriate there at all, bitch."

"Jackie, stop it."

"No, you stop it! She went to him, her dead fiancé 's married best friend. A side from that, you were like a sister to Elvis, it's like she shagged her sister-in-law's husband."

"She wasn't to know how close we were. It's not like we really kept in touch after Elvis and the wedding and they'd only just got back together before he died."

"She was still your friend, he was her Command Officer. She was _still_ the instigator."

"He didn't stop her though, did he and why would he? He'd been trying to warm her up into a relationship since Headley."

The weight of pain that passed across Molly's face, broke Jackie's heart all over again. It never seemed to lighten; each replay of a painful memory seemed to be as freshly harmful as the first time.

"He wasn't always a bastard, Molls." Jackie said softly, eyes fixed on Molly's down turned head, hopeful that, one day, the happy memories might cancel out the hurtful because, at one time, they had been the most in sync and truly connected couples that she'd ever met.

"And they were both ill. You can't defend one while vilifying the other."

Molly ran a tired hand over her face, lack of sleep and the wine catching up on her, never mind that she had always found this sort of circular argument with Jackie exhausting. Mostly because the most painfully honest part of her wanted to say he'd never been a bastard, even at the end, he'd just stopped loving her enough to stay.

"There's no winners in this, Jacs."

"If I have to take a side, I'm taking yours. She had no right to turn up in your life and throw around details of their affair. I remember the state you were in after talking to Brains. It's done, she should have left it in the past."

"She said there was no affair. It was a one-time thing for him at least. He woke up with her sitting waiting for him and he…" Molly paused, seeming to need a moment to collect herself. "She said he regretted what they'd done and that she's never spoken to him since."

"There was no affair? One shag, and he got the hell out of dodge?"

"There's worse. Apparently, Brains blabbed to some select members of Two Section, and they judged her on it."

"Ouch. Well deserved, but that must have hurt. I almost feel sorry for Combat-Barbie. Almost."

"That was around about the time her mother contacted me."

"I remember. But I still don't understand why she felt the need to get in contact, why be bitch and rub salt in the wound? It's not like they ended up together, is it?"

"It wasn't about that. She wanted to tell me about him and give me that." Molly nodded towards the ball of paper. "I think she thought she was being helpful. She's leaving the Army apparently. Off to work as an NGO in Kenya."

There it was again. The _I want to talk, but can't_ expression on Jackie's face.

"So… what are you going to do with this new information?"

"Absolutely nothing. I can't go back over it all again. I have to move forwards."

Georgie's words rolled around in Molly's head again, unwelcome and loud.

 ** _We both had PTSD and were both denying it. Why can't you see that and bend a little and listen to what I'm trying to say to you…_**

 ** _I think you're doing what you do best–surviving…_**

 ** _He's the same. Surviving, just like you…_**

 ** _You told him your relationship needed put out of its misery._**

Jackie watched the expressions shift across Molly's face, before finally settling into a sort of resigned tiredness.

Jackie remembered back to when they'd first met in Afgan. When her friend had been gobby little Molly Dawes, green as a grass and inclined to throw her heart into everything she did. She was older now, more worn. Molly would say she was better for the experience, mature, more careful. Jackie's assessment was that she was more guarded and that she'd lost some of herself because of it. She approached everything and everyone now like she expected the world to bruise her if she wasn't vigilant.

"Okay, enough of this depression inducing subject. Why don't we put the log burner on, gets pillows together, snacks, have a carpet picnic? It'll be fun."

"Well, I see only a few issues with that."

"Buzz kill, what problems?"

"Well, for one, it's warm outside, we'll bleedin' roast. For two, we've both just finished the better part of a pizza, while sitting on a rug, surrounded by cushions, so I think we already finished the carpet picnic."

"Are you telling me we've finished a carpet picnic, and I bleedin's missed it?." Jackie said, copying Molly's accent with surprising accuracy, except for the giggling at the end.

"Story of your life, eh?"

Molly wriggled her legs underneath Jackie's head, until she sat up.

"I was just getting comfie."

"I know, but we both need to hit out pits." Molly stood up, stretching tiredly.

Jackie stretched back out on the rug, splayed out and comfortable looking like a cat basking contentedly in the sun.

"I need a shower, too. I honk. It's damn sweaty in Ward 10. I swear to god the heating jammed on or something."

Molly held her hand out to Jackie, and helped pull her to her feet. Jackie slung her arm around Molly waist affectionately as they turned to walk towards their bedrooms.

"You'll thank me tomorrow. Well, this evening. You know what I mean. Nightshift always messes with my time keeping."

"I doubt that very much. Where is it we're going? Kingsbury Park?"

"10K, in a beautiful country park with lakes and trees and shit. Should be stunning."

"Sure, because pounding around a park with nightshift belly while inhaling insects is always fun. Yay!" Jackie grumbled.

"It will help you sleep tonight and when we're called back to Aldershot to go on night exercise and we've got full kit and Sergeant Mulholland barkin' at our backs, you'll thank me for reminding you that ward work is not a substitute for PT. Or whatever it was you said last month when _you_ suggested this."

"Molly?" Jackie asked, stopping by her bedroom door.

"Yes."

"Next time I have such a super idea, tell me to shut the fuck up! Okay?"

"Will do." Molly replied with a grin.

"Wait, what did you do with that paper."

"Why?" Molly asked, turning slowly to look at Jackie.

"All joking aside. What I said before, he wasn't always a bastard–"

Molly raised her hand in a rapid silencing gesture, cutting Jackie off. "I know. Doesn't make a difference though. I can't go back."

"It doesn't have to be going back, though, does it?"

Molly shrugged, unwilling to take the subject any further. "Night, Jacs."

"Night, Molls."

Behind her closed bedroom door, Molly opened her fingers to reveal the crumpled piece of paper which she had in her hand all the time. She'd originally intended to throw into the log-burner as a final _fuck you_ to Georgie and her accusation that she was letting her insecurities do her talking.

She walked over to her dresser, opened the bottom draw, dropped the ball of paper inside, then slammed it shut again with a heavy sigh.

Molly had worked bloody hard to gain the hard fought for progress she'd made since she'd left. She wasn't going to let Georgie bloody Lane make her doubt her choices now.

 **ooOOoo**

When four o'clock rolled around, Molly woke to find Jackie wide awake and obnoxious energetic standing by her bed in running gear and holding out a cup of tea.

Molly pulled herself up to sit leaning against her pillows. She took the tea and watched Jackie's smiling face dubiously over the rim of the cup as she drank deeply.

"You're really gonna make me do this?"

"Yep."

"How can you be so…" Molly wave hand up and down to encompass the bundle of energy that was Jackie. "Instagram ready, after last night, this morning and alcohol and pizza?"

"Fabulous DNA and Red Bull. Come on, get your skinny arse on the move. You're driving this time."

 **ooOOoo**

As it turned out, Molly's assessment that Kingsbury Park would be a nice place for a run had been right and Jackie's about swallowing insects had been mostly wrong. By the 6k mark, both decided that 10k straight after nightshift might have been a little ambitious and changed route to get back to the car sooner.

Slowing to a walk, Molly took out her head phones and turned to see Jackie do the same as she rolled her head and shoulders to stretch out tight muscles.

"Are you alright?" Jackie asked, her tone contained and careful.

"Yes, why wouldn't I be?" Molly replied.

"I heard you crying out in your sleep. It's been a while since that last happen. I just thought you might want to talk about it?"

Molly shrugged. "It's not really unexpected is it, with Georgie popping up stirring things that are better left alone. It's the same nightmare as usual. We're on the bridge, he is on the ground shot, only this time he's calling out for her instead of me. Same same old same old. It did get me thinking about what we discussed last time."

"Come on, Molls. Not this shit again. Look, the two of you were a strong couple once. He loved you, everybody saw that. Life and it's way of turning into a steaming pile of shit just go in the way."

"But he has a pattern, doesn't he? Things get rough at home, he hides in the job. Happened with Rebecca, and with me."

"I don't think those scenarios are fair to compare. I've met Rebecca at family day at Bulford after my first tour of Afgan, seen them together. He wasn't the same with her as with you."

"But what if I'm part of another pattern. He gets injured, and starts having feelings for his… fucksake, I don't know what term to use… rescuer. It happened with me, maybe that's what happened with Georgie?"

"Georgie requirement to be hero of the day in the jungle would never have happened if Kingy had shown some balls and kept her in her place. But I have my own theories about stuff going wrong in Two Section since he got ill. You've heard my opinions on that, so stop this. He isn't a serial Medic shagger. Believe me, I've met the type, I would know.

"He was in love with you before he got shot. You know this, I don't know why you keep letting yourself get so insecure about the past. You had a solid, loving marriage. You husband was besotted with you."

"Until he wasn't."

Jackie looked at her feet sudden, and Molly caught the gesture.

"Okay, enough of this. That's the third time in as many hours you've pulled that face. If you have something to say, just say it, please, Jacs."

"Are you sure. You were really blood adamant after you left that you didn't want to hear about anything to do with him. Made your poor Mum scared in case she said the wrong thing for a long time after. That's why she told me."

"Told you what?"

"That he turned up at your parents, the week after you left for Turkey. Was in quite a state."

"I suspected he might, but what difference does it make now?"

"He turned up more than once. You know that your Nan has a soft spot for him. She told him–"

"Told him what?" Molly asked, voice now furious. "I asked them to do one thing, one bleedin' thing."

"Triggered much? No wonder you made you Mum nervous. She told him you were based out of Aldershot. She didn't give him an address or anything. So…"

"So, what?"

"Then he turns up in Guildford. Don't you think that more than just a coincidence?"

"I don't want to think about any of it at all, Jacs. I don't want think about it, dream about or fucking talking about it anymore. All of this is thanks to bloody Georgie turning up uninvited and throwing my life up in the air again. I had everything settled, sort, she's sent it all to shit again!" Molly shouted, before turning on her heal and striding off up the path.

Jackie caught her easily, pulling her gently around by her arm and into a tight hug as Molly stood trembling her friend's arms.

"I love you, Molls, to hell and back in every way. And I admire the way you've pulled yourself through this best you can by shear stubborn will alone, but that stubbornness might not be helpful always. Your so fixed on things once you've made up your mind; like a steel bar, utterly inflexible. The problem with things that won't bend is they tend to break instead, and I don't believe you're properly over this, no matter how much you say it. I might believe you when I hear you use his name for the first time in a year instead of he or him."

"I'm doing the best I can, Jacs. I don't know how to do things differently."

"I know, I know." Jackie replied, squeezing her tighter.

Molly pulled back first, wiping away tears with the back of her hand before taking a large breath. "I'm okay."

"So you keep saying, but I'll leave it alone for now."

They turned and started to walk back to the car again as Jackie study the stiff set of her friend's shoulders and back with worried eyes.

"Maybe you need to go back to Dr Daddy-issues."

"Jesus, Jacs. You are your nicknames. Dr Sinclair isn't going to have anything new to say about this. I don't want rehash that all over again, it would be like going back to beginning again."

"Okay, if that's what you think."

"I think it's best."

"Are you still going to come to Matts birthday night-out?"

"Of course, why wouldn't I?"

"Because it's in Guildford?"

God help her, just for a minute Molly felt herself hesitate with an answer. Then she got annoyed with herself two seconds later.

"Guildford is a big city, why should I avoid it on the tiny chance we might bump into him. It would be like me leaving the Army to make sure we never met, and just as bat-shit."

"Yeah well, we've all got our difficulties, don't we? I've got to work out how to tell Matt that a Major in his chain of command is your estranged husband."

"I wish you well with that one, mate."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

* * *

 _…And here am I, budding_

 _among the ruins_

 _with only sorrow to bite on,_

 _as if weeping were a seed and I_

 _the earth's only furrow._

 _Pablo Neruda, Lightless Suburb_

* * *

One month on and Jackie's predictions that Molly wasn't going to be able to find peace after Georgie's uninvited invasion into her life, by ignoring it, had proved true. The nightmares continued, each a different variation around the same couple of themes.

Molly had seen many things in her time in the Army, some amazing some traumatising. She had gotten used to losing sleep while her brain processed through the upsetting things. These dreams were different, deeper, and made worse in the split second on waking when she found herself reaching for him for comfort only to remember that he wasn't there anymore and why. It was the same anguishing cycle night after night.

When Jackie brought up Molly's worsening nightmares, Molly shut her down quickly by pointing out she had yet to tell her boyfriend about a certain Major being in his chain of command, so people in glass house probably shouldn't throw stones.

Matt's birthday night out came around fast enough and the three went out with a large group of Matt's friends. First to bowling, where they drank warm beer and eat chewy pizza out of plastic baskets, before dressing Matt up in a "birthday boy" sash and hitting the pubs in the town centre.

Jackie noticed just how hard Molly was trying to laugh harder, talk faster and act her way out of the linger sadness that seemed to have been dogging her lately. To an outsider, she was the life and soul of the party, vivacious, lively and fun. It was all a front, hiding that she was drowning within the confines of her carefully restructured life. It broke Jackie's heart. Just short of a year on and Molly still couldn't find peace. So, if cocktails and giggling where Molly's plan of action, who was she to argue?

 **ooOOoo**

Molly told Jackie she wanted some fresh air and she was going back to the hotel for an early night when she left the final pub and stepped out onto the cobbles of Guildford High Street. It hadn't been a lie at the time, but she surprised herself when she found her feet turning the corner onto his street.

She had walked there under home steam, obviously. It's was not like she had been coerced or forced. She was surprised because the voice in her head telling her _not to_ was so much quieter than the one telling her she _had to_ go. After weeks of obsessing about his address and Georgie's revelations, had could she not come?

The seed of the thought that led her to his street was Matt's fault. A crowing toast to absent friends which was laughingly return by his work colleagues in the name of those absent away on a mass forty-eight-hour exercise to Salisbury Plains. It was at that point that her brain had whispered that this excursion into his space might be safe.

His street was close-ish to the town centre. A quietly expensive road of Victorian brick houses. When Molly stopped at the correct number, she was surprised by what she found. She'd been expecting the street to end with some sort of modern flats. The double bay fronted, detached house she was standing in front of wasn't his taste at all.

He'd said it more than once; that after growing up in his parents' drafty barn of townhouse, modern, insulated and draft free was more his ideal in a home. This house in all it symmetrical bay-windowed, prettiness was more her taste than his. Their home in Bath had been a compromise of both their tastes; a modern house, built in a cottage style. This choice for his new home blindsided her–the unexpectedness of it. She couldn't quite skip over the thought it might be to someone else's taste, despite what Georgie had said about there being no one else since Bangladesh. That wrench of a thought was followed by another containing the lie that she didn't care anymore–either way.

There was no car on the drive and no lights on in the window; despite the darkness of the evening. It was too early for him to be in bed. Molly walked through the gate, up the path that perfectly divided the small front garden into two carefully cropped lawns. She stopped at the front door which sat under an open oak-frame and slate roofed porch that she'd have called cute and he'd have called impractical; in another life.

She found it easily. Screwed into the brickwork, the same sort of key-safe that they had in their old house. A practical solution for people who spent a lot of time away from home on tour to give access to the cleaner that he'd insisted on and she'd taken a while to get used to.

Molly tapped the code in almost as an afterthought, not really believing that it would make the little device slide open. The code was the same as before–her birth date–and she had the key in her hand and then in the lock before she had a chance to stop herself.

The wrongness of invading his private space didn't register to her over her sudden need for even the smallest of insights into how he was living now, and eight fast steps in a straight line and she was standing in the kitchen at the back of the house.

Lost in memories, she stepped out of her shoes and laid her bag down by the pine table that dominate one end of the large room. It was a complete act of a habit, a bit like muscle memory of returning home to their old house. How she'd take her shoes off, drop her bag and join him in their kitchen to be welcomed home–his smile, kiss, being held safe and close against his chest in a room full of the smells of home cooking and comfort. This room held none of that, but then neither had the kitchen at home after he returned from Nepal.

Turning in a slow circle, she looked over the neat as a pin room desperately looking for a sense of the familiar until she noticed the coffee machine sitting on the counter. It was familiar, yet not, evidence of his continuing coffee habit, especially the rack of rose-gold coloured Rosabaya capsules on the counter nearby, but it was not the same machine they'd kept in their kitchen in Bath–it had been replaced. Molly didn't want to explore why she found the replacement of a kitchen appliance irrationally upsetting.

Turning, Molly retraced her steps back towards the hall and turned into the first open door. She found herself standing in the living room. The furniture was all unfamiliar, she realised as she looked around. The mantel and the built-in shelving on either side of an impressive open fireplace lacked ornaments and knick-knacks, which made her wonder if the house was a rental rather the some where he'd bought.

There was a book laying open, and face down on the coffee table with the spine cracked at the half way point, showing his progress through the novel. He'd always been an avid reader. She'd bought him a Kindle for Christmas once, knowing that it would be more practical for when he was on tour than a Bergen full of books. He'd been pleased with the gift but continued to buy paper books for home. Each one he'd bought she'd teased him about what she called his old man reading habits. He'd always silenced her cheek with kisses and an admonishment about 'less of the old comments please'.

Molly stepped quickly away from the coffee table and turned her back on the room, like her closeness to the evidence of his continuance of normal, everyday habits was painful. She pushed the memory away at the same time because it left her with feelings that were sharp and raw when they'd once been warm and comforting. But that's all they'd been to each other in the end; raw. Like an exposed wound left to hurt without treatment.

Leaving had been her applying treatment. A sharp, burning cauterising of the wound. Being here in his home now was like picking at a healed scab. She still chose to progress further through the dark house moving lightly and silent like a ghost leaving no trace as she trailed her fingers across surfaces that he'd touched. Heading up the neat central staircase made of polished wood, her feet sunk into the stripped central runner that matched the colours in tiled hallway below and carpeting on the landing above.

Five doors were available to be explored at the top of the stairs. Skipping the bathroom, the second door opened to a bedroom that was obviously Sam's judging by the posters and display of Lego on shelves above the bed. The third door opened to reveal a room large enough to a bedroom but which has been setup as a study and the fourth was another bedroom. At the fifth door, she hesitated before entering because this was the room the helds the biggest truths, potentially, and her most silently held fears.

The polished brass door knob yielded, under her cold fingers, turning and opening noiselessly as the four panelled, white painted door swung open as she stepped into where she has no right to be anymore. Facing the front of house, the room was surprising well lite from the street lights outside of the large bay window. A king-sized bed, neatly made, denominated the centre of the room with bedside cabinets flanking either side, built in wardrobe to the right, and bay window to the left and an open door through to an ensuite.

It was the picture frame on bedside cabinet of his habitual side of the bed that brought a gasp to her lips. She recognised the frame. She'd bought it for him when they'd returned from honeymoon, and it had been the first thing he packed in his Bergan before he left on a trip, and sat on his office desk in Barracks when he was based at home. Containing one of their wedding photos, it was a candid shot taken after the more formal style shots of the ceremony and drinks afterwards, and her most favourite from the whole day. Charles was still in uniform, but without his cap, gloves and sword, sitting at the top of a grass slope in the hotel's gardens with her sitting half on his lap in her wedding dress and their arms wrapped around each other, both laughing uproariously at Sam rolling down the slope in his wedding suit without a care in world.

The thought burned through her: in a house otherwise baron of personal touches, this was what he chose to keep by his bed?

When a panicky little rush of unwelcome emotions pressed on her chest, she swung away from the bed towards the wardrobe, looking desperately for something, but not sure what. She opened all four of the wardrobe doors, swinging them wide like a matched pair of mirrored wings. Two identical cupboards greeted her anxious eyes. With shelves to the side, shelf above and hang rails below, they were reverse mirror images of each other. Except, where one held his clothes–Army locker neat, as he'd always been– the other has only two items inside. The little wooden jewellery box she'd left behind and the cream coloured dress bag she knew contained her wedding dress.

She grabbed for the wooden box, flipping it open hurriedly. The ring box that should have contained the matched-set of her wedding and engagement rings was there, but empty. She closed the lid, and placed the box back on the shelf with shaking hands. She checked the other wardrobe quickly, looking for the reassurance of the absence of his Bergen. As she suspected, it was gone, meaning he was away. It was a relief to sit down on the bed, because she needed some time to process.

She should never have come here and yet is struggling to make herself leave. There were too many memories and questions running wild in her head causing her to be paralysed with doubts. Their marriage had been a successful one. Loving, nurturing and protective. He'd been behind her 100% encouraging her in ever success, welcoming every homecoming, yearning and wistful at every parting, but present always present; the absolute solid centre of her world around which she'd happily orbited. His family became hers, and their lives were so seamlessly blended that when they'd fractured, she'd struggled to remember how to be the her, without him, that she'd been before they'd met.

Elvis had been at the beginning and the end of them. She'd met him their first Christmas in his parent's house in Bath, after her return from Afghan. He'd become the lovingly, loud and annoying older brother that she never wanted or realised she needed. It had been inevitable, really, because Elvis just had a way of getting into the hearts of the people who were important to him. Once he was in there, he'd never really left.

After his death, Charles' grief had been all consuming. His silent, anxious suffering left no room for anything else, pushing everything else out and leaving him an emotional void. Work became his survival strategy and Molly had found herself isolated from her husband. He'd been physically present, but emotionally gone and it had brought back to life every insecurity she'd ever had in the early days of their relationship and fed that particular emotional fire the longer his emotional absence continued.

She'd tried so hard at the start to be the right kind of wife to get them passed Elvis' loss. Giving him space, time, quiet support. Researching PTSD, attending extra training, applying that learning to their home life, but nothing worked. She tried striving harder at work, aiming higher to be the bloody brilliant he'd always said he wanted her to be. Still she wasn't what he needed or seemed to want.

In the end she'd had to watch it all go to shit. What started out as a loving fairy-tale of the officer and his medic, ended up as a twisted parody. In their final story it was the prince who was locked in his emotional tower, and the inadequate princess who was left outside without the skills to affect a rescue.

Well-practised patience and presence switched into one-sided flaming arguments and storming out as her insecurities got louder, and her confidence diminished. Either way, he remained the same–detached, removed, and lost to Molly. It broke her spirit a little more each time she fought for him and he slipped further away despite her efforts.

She researched counselling. He refused to engage. She turned down training opportunities and tours away, and asked him to do the same. He made excuses, found reason why not, and left the country again and again. She threatened to leave but never actually went anywhere. She told him he need to leave her. Instead he left for Nigeria, but returned home afterwards as though her words had never been spoken.

When he left for Belize and she'd woken in the middle of the night to an empty bed and burst into painful, wretched sobs, her resolution had been made. This wasn't a life. He didn't need or want her anymore. The husband that she'd married, loved and who loved her back, had died in Afghanistan with Elvis and wasn't coming back. The Army was what he wanted and needed, and she needed to get at of his way before she turned into the new Rebecca.

Her hope, strength and will to fight for him _–them–_ had been reborn in a dark little hospital room in the Military wing of Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Feverish and delirious he called our or her, reached out for her, told her he loved her and she'd put those thoughts away. He'd so nearly died, but in those days when he'd been close to a possible end, she'd been the one he needed, just like he'd promised in Afghan.

The light of that hope flickered when she found his text messages to Georgie on his final stay at Headley. Her first wounded reaction was to bolt to the familiar. A visit to her CO and she was back in Afghan, thousands of miles away from her crumbling marriage and buried in the familiar but now cold comfort of work as part of the NATO Resolute Support Mission.

She'd tried some juvenile games playing in between. Emails saying maybe they weren't working out because, to be honest, she'd been too scared to phone. At the time she'd thought she was stating the truth, but she'd really being hoping to prompt a response, any response that could be read as his denial of her truth.

The hope finally blinked out when he left their home to return to Two Section in Bangladesh on the back of his polite-fully stifling, emailed agreement that perhaps he was having the same doubts. The tone and content of the email had been upsetting. He might have been writing to complete stranger. That had been the beginning of their end while she was still in Afghan. Alone and tortured by her insecurities and ever active imagination and burning anger towards him because of his pursuit of Georgie Lane.

From a hospital room in Afghan, she had tried again with an awkward phone. While she'd wanted to ask him if this was hurting him as much as it was hurting her, they'd ended up talking in careful, neutral tones. Such mundane, polite conversation while she silently screamed inside because she couldn't find the words to say that this wasn't what she wanted. Not really. At the end of the call, when he told her to 'take care' instead of 'I love you', another little piece of her died inside all over again.

Her return to the UK to an empty house had brought the final painful reality; their house was no longer a home without the love it had once held. So, she left.

Now she was back, in his house not their home, and it was breaking her heart all over again like a fresh pain, bitter and sharp. Bloody Georgie and her words and assurances had caused this. Before that conversation, her hurt was about what she'd lost and about blame and accusations. This pain was worse, fresher. This was about what she could have had if she'd stayed just a little longer. Been strong enough to hold on, because in the end he got the help she begged him to get. Taken the UK based role their relationship would have needed to give them time together to heal and grow, but it had all been too little too late and this fresh realisation of a new way to she'd lost him felt like it was happening all over again and that one concentrated hit of pain was gutting.

She lay back on the bed, dragging a pillow out from under the duvet and buried her head into cloth. Finding the faint traces of his ridiculously expensive, and achingly familiar cedar wood and Juniper aftershave, she curled herself into a tight ball around the only piece of him that she could access and let months of misery loose into the cotton material.

She'd cried properly twice after she'd left. The first into the mattress of her old bunk-bed in her parent's house, the second in Jackie's arms in Turkey at the refugee camp. Now was the third and possibly the worst.

The dark, silent house was a shouting metaphor for how shit things had gotten. Empty house, empty life, dead marriage.

Doubts, regrets, loneliness… she let them all come and drown her until the oblivion of exhausted sleep dragged her under.


	4. Chapter 4

Author Note

 _Many thanks, as always, for the reviews._

 _Sorry for the delay in updating but I've had some IT issues and lost files, meaning I'm having to re-write stuff already written. Moral of the story with laptops, 'reformat' is not the same as 'recover', and back up hard disks can also break. That was a face-palm moment if ever I've experienced one._

 _Mood music – Hurricane - Fleurie, Moon Shines Red – Jamie McDell, Dynasty – MIIA_

* * *

 **Chapter Four**

* * *

 _Hate leaves ugly scars; love leaves beautiful ones. - **Mignon McLaughlin**_

* * *

Curled into a ball and half rolled up under the duvet, Molly might have looked like the picture of restful sleep but for the way her eyes were darting backwards and forwards restlessly under her squeezed shut eyelids, and the death grip she had on the cotton of the duvet cover as her knuckles showed white through the skin on the back of her hands. Held tightly within the depths of a dream; her mind was replaying the consequences of her decision to hide in Afghanistan after she left him behind in Headley.

Her original deployment had been a variant on her previous mentoring and training roles but took an unexpected direction when a case of right place, peculiar timing saw it turn into a secondment to a SF mission. At the time, she'd agreed to the mission without letting herself examine her motivations. With time and reflection, her reasons had been laughably obvious

Too much time apart, his illness, and her insecurities were all reasons for the problems in their marriage. Like wearing a heavy, soaked through coat, she'd been weighed down with her anxieties and regrets regarding her faults and failings in their marriage. The SF mission had been a new challenge and an escape from her current reality all rolled into one and she'd ran towards it willingly.

She had Captain McClyde labelled within minutes of the meeting with her CO starting. Intelligent, good looking and cocksure with it, he was hardcore in a way that only SF guys seemed to be. A mad bastard like he was Elvis 2.0 but with upgraded manwhoreitus tendencies proudly on display. He had needed a top shelf medic. Molly was decorated, experienced, female and available.

A Taliban War Lord had approached the ANA through covert channels offering to switch sides in return for treatment for his cancer-stricken wife and protection and re-settlement for his family. A female medic was needed, as potentially intimate treatment from a male medic would have been culturally unacceptable.

Captain McClyde's team had been a mix of people Molly had met via Elvis and two new faces. The re-connection to her Elvis memories via Spanner and Dyno was bitter sweet, particularly as Dyno was on that last fatal mission where he had been wounded himself.

The extraction was text book, and the celebrations after satisfyingly booze soaked. The drive back to where she was based in Kabul with Dyno involved a monster hangover but was fun and filled with easy banter.

In her sleep, Molly's memories of her world _before_ morphed into terrifying techno-colour of _after_ and she whimpered pitifully in her sleep knowing what was coming.

A loud bang as a tyre gave out on a middle of nowhere gravel road.

The sensation of tumbling like clothes in a washing machine. Being thrown with bruising force against the seat belt as the Land Rover rolled in nauseating turns and spins filled with the noise of screaming metal and the sounds of an over revving engine.

Dust in her mouth a she screamed.

The horrifying thuds of Dyno's unrestrained body being flung against the steering wheel and wind screen. Then a sickening silence so thick she'd wished to go back to the earlier noise of the car tearing itself apart.

They came to rest fifty feet below the path of the road. The contorted remains of their Army Land Rover was crushed, on its side and wedged between the walls of a drainage ditch and some scrubby trees.

Molly shifted restlessly on the bed; curling tighter into herself protectively as her body reacted to her distress. Her mouth moved in the shape of words, without making actually sounds.

One part of her mind tried to deny permission to replay the images of what she knew came next, but the images were too bright and loud to be ignored. Molly's whimpering protests and rapid breathing became harsher.

Her training meant Molly knew the truth in a situation where ignorance might have given more comfort. He was dying.

There was nothing she could do either in the claustrophobic crush and heat of the ruin vehicle, or within the smothering tangle of the duvet that was wrapped around her twisting body in the ruins of the bed.

Blood from his head injury stained Molly's clothes and hands as she cradled his head in her lap; the bright red darkening to claret colour as it dried as time passed.

Dyno talked to his wife as his life slowly drained away. Murmuring her name, mixed with words of apology and love.

In his final moments, Molly had been the one talking, as she did out loud within the dream. Begging him to fight, to wait out, to try. For him. For her. For his absent wife, Ellie.

When the life final left his eyes, she sobbed for them both because twisted up inside her own head with the trauma of watching a man die over the space of many hours trapped in the heat of the wrecked Land Rover, she decided on some truths. She was the problem…not enough of a Medic to save Dyno where Georgie had succeeded a year before. Not enough of a wife… because Georgie was who he turned to at Headley. Just not enough.

This nightmare always ended the same way. His death and Molly screaming out and sobbing for the husband who didn't need or want her anymore. Who wasn't there anymore to snatch her back from the terrifying void between sleep and awake.

She braced herself for it, the absence of comfort, even as his name tumbled from her lips in staccato, broken syllables around her panicky gasps for breath.

Rolling onto her stomach, she buried her head into the bedding and sobbed her anguish into the mattress.

This time was different because he heard and responded to her pleading. Cared again to curl his long, lean body around her tiny, shuddering frame; offering the shelter she craved but always woke to find missing. Strong arms came across her back and tighten, and she was held secure finally.

Molly rolled towards him automatically, half laying across his chest with her face buried against the warmth of his neck like she wanted to be absorbed into his very skin and listened to the rumble of his voice through his chest as he whispered her name and murmured phrases of reassurance.

"You're okay, Molly. I have you. I'm here…you're safe."

Molly's breathing stuttered in and out around her sobs as shudders and ripples of reaction shivered through the muscles of her back under his stroking hands.

He pressed kisses against her face and hair, but it was the aching familiarity of his scent and the solid warmth his chest under her cheek that made her finally let herself relax into the contours of his body.

"I love you. You're safe."

Her breathing started to slow to match his. Sobs quieting then stopping.

"I'm here. I love you. You're safe."

Molly came back to calmness and quiet slowly. Believing in the words in the dream, if not the physical reality of the form underneath her, she let herself relax into the illusion of the safety of him and sleep, because safe isn't something she's felt in a very long time.

 **ooOOoo**

Molly shifted in his arms. Her small fingers curling and uncurling against the skin of his neck where they are tucked under the collar of his uniform shirt before she settles again as his arms tighten around her more securely.

Worry and guilt crease Charles' forehead. The first in case she slipped back into her nightmares despite the silent, watchful sentry duty he'd held over her sleep for the last few hours. The second because he knows he shouldn't be holding her like this, even though it's giving them both needful comfort.

The languid, welcome weight of her warmth laid out across his chest shifts again as she nuzzles her face against the nook between the slope of his shoulder and his neck. The long sleepy huff of her breath she makes as she half sighs half yawns while straighten and stretching makes him smile because it reminds him of happier times before…

The way she curls herself back into him, trustingly moulding her body around his with a faster huff of breath as wakefulness comes closer, makes the smile on his face straighten back out into his early frown. His conflicted emotions are written clearly on his face once again.

He holds his breath, careful not to move in case he startles her and ends the achingly familiar, simple pleasure of witnessing her waking up. It's a bitter sweet sort of feeling because he knows now that he didn't appreciate, enough, the privilege of simple moments like this when they were together.

That's the thing about loss, it brings with it the sting of regrets but he's grateful to be able to feel the pain. In the numbing muddle his head had become after witnessing Elvis' loss he'd lost the ability to feel much of anything at all. So, even if the moment with her hurts, he's glad to be able to feel that honest emotion again.

There's comfort in this moment too, because at least he can see that in all their time being separated, this part of her hasn't changed. For this brief period of time he holds her secure and plaint against him, while he's allowed, and feels a contentment that has been missing for a very, very long time.

Of course, it doesn't last. He counts twenty slow thrums of Molly's pulse under his hand against her neck and feels the moment when her heart rate starts to fly as she stiffens and her breathing shortens and quickens. Her hand moves away from the contact with his skin like it burns.

Before she can sit up or try to separate them, he catches her hand in his, presses a kiss to her palm then holds her palm flight against his chest. She can feel his heart thumping under her splayed fingers. The rhythm is faster than before, much like her own.

Molly's not sure why, but she lets hr fingers trace across his gently, like a caress. When he splays his fingers apart to engulf hers, she lets him and stares at the way they knit together. As though the sight of her smaller fingers dwarf by his has her mesmerised.

The contrast of soft sheen of his wedding band next to her naked ring finger is as jarring as it is confusing.

"You still wear it."

"I'm a married man."

His voice is sleep roughened. A reminder of countless morning when they would wake up wrapper around each other, the very definition of together. The memory stirs up feelings in Molly that she's automatically scared to explore.

Fear makes her sharp and brittle, and she strikes out instinctively, trying to wound.

"Did you wear it when you fucked her?"

"No but you weren't wearing your rings at the time either."

Then she's on fire and he's going to burn too.

* * *

 _Some insight into my version of what Molly was going through around those last phone calls and emails and an explanation for why she's quite so broken and on the run emotionally speaking._


	5. Chapter 5

**Author Note**

 _Many thanks for the reviews. I'm always amazed by the response to this story given that it's not what could be described as an easy read at all._

 _I'm also on the hunt for a beta reader if anyone has the time. I'm starting to annoy myself with my inability to find my own mistakes._

 **Chapter Five**

* * *

 _Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity –_ _ **Hippocrates**_

* * *

Molly shoved herself off of his chest and retreated to the foot of the bed, knees drawn to her chest defensively. Charles mirrored her movement, sitting up, but where she had herself curled into a defensive ball, he leaned forwards, moving his weight onto one arm as he held the other out, open palm upwards, asking her silently for contact. When she drew herself into a tighter ball in response, he retreated reluctantly, sitting with his back against the headboard and watching her with a carefully neutral expression.

"Molly–"

"You're a married man?" The anger in her eyes and voice was corrosive. Burning from the inside out like acid in her blood. "Easily fixed. Tell me, if I included Georgie's name on divorce papers for adultery, would you contest it?

"It would put you in the shit, of course. CO and Medic sited for adultery. That would ring a few alarm bells back at Regimental HQ. She's out of the Army now so it wouldn't touch her, would it? You on the other hand would be starting to show a pattern. Not the desirable done thing, eh?"

"You and I are worth more than pieces of paper from a lawyer's office. We always were."

"Are we? You could have fooled me. Perhaps Georgie's isn't the right name to use. Is there new one? A Georgie replacement? It's been a year hasn't it? Time enough for you to have developed another itch to scratch."

She cocked her head to the side like she was considering the possibilities.

"But then maybe you don't have access to Medics at Sandhurst. Army doctors maybe? Would a doctor do? I've never been sure if it's a Medic that you need or if any adoring new female to worship you will do, once the old one has lost their shine."

"There is no replacement, only you." he said, eyes pleading for something he was doubtful she would ever be willing to give him again. "I hurt you…we hurt each other. You're wounded and defensive and I deserve that reaction but we can get passed this, please…"

"What if I don't want to get passed it?"

Charles reached out for her again, leaning towards the end of the bed where she was curled up like a cornered cat, all claws and coiled threat. When the tips of his fingers made the briefest of contact with her knee, Molly launched herself out of the bed and towards the bedroom door.

He followed, desperation and the adrenaline that was already thumping through his system giving him surprising speed. He beat her to it, just, and body blocked the door and her method of exit.

"Move!"

"No. Not until we've talked about this."

His tone was firm, an instruction not a request, but he took a step backwards as a placatory gesture and she copied, moving even further back. The space between them widened and sat there like a silently screaming announcement of the distance and mistrust that was killing them both one painful heartbeat at a time.

"Was I too easy for you, too compliant? The boring little wife back home. There she was with you out on tour when all the adrenaline flowing. Flashin' her perfect face and figure and push in' her luck just a bit, just enough to make her more interesting. Was that it?"

"You know that's not how it was."

"Do I?" she said, almost pleasantly. "What I do know is she was some sort of escape for you. Same as burying yourself in work, because that's what you do, isn't it? Run when it gets hard at home. You did it to Rebecca then you did it to me. Only this time, work got hard too and there she was, my more experience, better looking, from a better family replacement."

He kept his eyes fixed on her steadily and could see what she doing. Molly was wearing her rage like a shield, but there was a flicker of something in her eyes just then. A shift in the colour in their wide green depths clear as day. Pain. A pain that he caused.

There is a new urgency to his reply because the guilt is killing him. Just as much as the enforced distance he has kept between them for the past year.

"It was never about you being found lacking, ever." he replied, his voice rough with emotion. "It was all about me, my doubts in myself, never you."

He took a step towards her again and she retreated again in response. He stopped abruptly, running a hand through his hair; his body language screaming frustration.

"I'm not proud of the choices I made, but I was fucking terrified I was losing everything. My head was all over the bloody place. It's not an excuse but it is a reason."

Choices. Reasons. Loss. She wanted to scream the words back at him. To throw them like weapons because no one had ever left bruises on her the way he'd left emotional bruises and regardless of his careful words, they were still excuses for the inexcusable.

"After Elvis–" He stumbled on the name of his best friend, dropping his gaze to floor trying to collect himself with an awkward cough of sound that was an attempt to cover up the break in his voice.

"You're right about it being like with Rebecca. After Geriant died, I did to her what I did to you. Turned inwards on myself and closed myself off. With Rebecca it was different, we shouldn't have been together in the first place, if it wasn't for Sam.

Molly studied his downturned head in his moment of emotionally naked vulnerability. He was all muscular lines and angles. Jaw tight, eyes dark, damp and tortured. Still beautiful to look at and still the destroyer of their relationship.

"With you, I trapped myself into a pattern of behaviour that meant I lost everything that I needed to heal. I pushed you so far away from me that I just could find a way to explain what was going on in my own head.

"It was like I'd blinded myself to what was really happening, then and blinked, cleared my vision and all I could see was everything at home and at work going to shit and I was in it so deep I was drowning before I realise what was happening.

"You kept saying you were having doubts about us. There was a distance between Sam and I that I couldn't find a way to close. In the end, Two Section and Georgie were about the only solid stuff I felt I had left."

He wiped his cheek with an impatient hand and his tears almost broke Molly because his pain always had. Especially in the rare moments when he'd let her close enough to see it when their relationship had crumbled around them. One painful truth always held her back, then and now. That the love of her life hadn't needed or reached for her when things had got hard, even though she'd been waiting to catch him. He reached for somebody else in the end.

"You, Sam. Elvis were already gone and it was my fault in my head for that loss. I had nothing else left, the same as Georgie. It seemed to make sense at the time. Even though it made no sense after we…"

"Fucked."

Pseudo soliloquy over, he nodded in agreement, like he'd run out of words or thoughts to express.

With that single jerky movement of his head, tears pooled in Molly's eyes, then spilled over. Sliding down her face and neck in salty trails. Evidence that sadness could become too heavy to carry for anyone no matter how brave; and because for her he was admitting to his ultimate betrayal–his ability to replace her _so_ easily.

Molly's fury was still there, fast burning and destructive, because his confession was incomplete and felt disingenuous like he was still hiding secrets. He hadn't admitted to the thing that broke her first. The thing that made her run when all hope for them had disappeared. That he had chased Georgie before things at been finished between them finally.

Suddenly Molly is the aggressor, walking towards him and straight into his personal space. So close that he can smell her perfume and feel her warmth even though she wasn't touching him.

Molly's hands ghosted across the shape of his face and neck. Making the movement of a caress without making contact and Charles bent down towards her automatically, like they're magnets pulling together. Her breath against the skin of his neck set off reactions in his body that he knew weren't appropriate but couldn't be helped because he's been starving for her for too long.

Like her physical proximity, she skirted the actual subject she wanted him to reveal, avoiding a direct approach, while laying her words out like a trap.

"How long did you wait, after we called it quits? One day. Two, a week? Was it a slow seduction?" Molly asked, her mouth by his ear and her hand against his chest and drifting lower, making him jerk in reaction.

"Maybe you teased her? Did she enjoy the way you used to like to kiss and tease me for ages until you drove me nuts? Or maybe you just got straight down to it. Thrust straight in? I mean, you'd been chasing her since Headley, hadn't you? The frustration – all them unanswered text messages."

"Did she cry out, when you fucked her?"

Molly pressed herself full against his front, hands drifting towards the indents by his hip bones, tipping her head back to watch his reaction and it was like she had him mesmerised like a cobra with it's prey.

On a very broken level, she was enjoying the reflexive, quivering tension in his muscles, and other parts, as his dark eyes burned into hers, pained.

"What's the matter, _Charlie_? Was she a shit lay? Or maybe it was you? Though you don't same to be having problems getting it up for me, or are you thinking about what you did with her?"

The use of that particular nickname snapped him back to reality, like having a bucket of ice water poured over his head and he caught her had before it could drift lower.

"Stop it, and don't call me that."

"Why not, it's what she calls you isn't it?"

He couldn't argue her point, but it still made him feel uncomfortable hearing Elvis' teasingly used nickname on Molly's lips. He never really understood why he accepted Georgie using either. It hardly fell into the realms of expected behaviour between an officer and subordinate, but then they'd killed that particular formality between ten ways to hell since Elvis died.

"I'm curious. You didn't make her wait out like you did me. Got right to it in barracks while I had to wait out. Why?"

"We were different. With you I was planning a future, building a life. With Georgie it was about desperation. I told myself we needed each other, but it was just sex in the end."

"How many times?"

"Molly–"

He lifted his hands and held her face with gentle desperation. Trying to connect to her through the wall of her hurt and anger. She allowed his touch, even pressed herself closer to his body, but the physical intimacy between them was a lie. They've never been more emotional further apart than at that moment.

"How many times did you fuck her!"

"Once. In Bangladesh after she'd been wounded in an explosion and she came to my room. Nothing else happened before that or after."

"You're lying."

"I'm not."

"Emotions happened before that, _Charlie_. It was about more than the one-time shag in barracks and we both know it. When did you talk to her about how you felt?"

Then he's angry and he lets the feeling loose. It unfair and irrational, but real and honest because there's been moments in his turmoil that he'd been furious with her too. At his darkest points he wanted to throw accusation like she was throwing them him. Judging her because she didn't fight harder and let her insecurities make her run instead stay and talk. Cut herself off so finally that they didn't have a way back to each other when he'd tried to fix things. Forgot all the good they'd had together before it all went to shit when faced with the bad. But he only vocalised the worst most deeply hurtful and truthful accusation of all, that she'd left him first.

"You told me to leave you."

"When."

"I needed you, and you told me to leave you. Told me we needed to put our marriage out of its misery."

"When."

"I needed my bloody wife and you run back to Afghanistan."

"Fucking _when_!"

"Belize, in the jungle."

Just like that, all his fury disappears, like breathed out air on a freezing cold day, visible then gone.

"I told her that my feelings had crossed a line. That we had bond because of Elvis."

"You've been busy. You had all that going on in your nut while I was sat by your bedside at Selly Oak scared out of my mind that I was going to lose you to sepsis, or that you might lose your leg. Even when you were calling out my name in the fever, you had feelings for fucking Georgie Lane and you followed through on it while you were at Headley."

"You told me to leave you then you physically left me, Molly.

"Of course, I left. Why do you think I went back to Afghan like my arse was on fire? I checked your phone and found your text messages.

"How could I stay and face seeing you knowing what was going on in your head about her. I was being replaced even while I was sitting by your hospital bed. You were texting her behind my back while lying to me about requesting a medical discharge.

"And you accuse me of leaving _you_ first? I think you'll find you're a liar because the husband that loved and needed me never really came back from Afghanistan, did he?"

"That wasn't something I choose. You must be able to understand that. I'm here now asking for you to let us try again. I still love you."

"All I've got left are the images that I've got burned into my head of you and her together. How shit I feel about myself because you replaced me with a better option. How I check to see if people are gossiping about me in barracks and on deployment in case someone from Two Section blabs and colleagues find out that my marriage didn't last two years before you found me lackin' and started shagged around."

Molly swiped at the tears flooding down her face and she hated herself and him even harder, because tears are weak and she needs to be strong to send him out of her life once and for all.

"Can you stop that, fix that, erase that?"

"I can't. I wish I could. I swear I do. I'm trying to give you reasons for the way I acted and they're coming across as excuses. I know. At the time I thought you'd let me go. That you didn't need me anymore. I still love you and I'm sor–"

"Don't you fucking dare say sorry to me, like that means shit to me."

Molly beat her hands again as his chest with enough force to make him need to stiffen his stance to avoid being shoved back.

"I don't mean it like that. I know I'm the reason for all of this."

"You understand fucking nothing. I needed you when Elvis died. I needed when you pushed me away and I didn't understand what I done wrong to make you so cold to me. I needed you when they pulled me out of a wrecked Land Rover in Afghanistan with a dead man. Where were you? With her, chasin' after her.

"Jesus, I can't even stand to look at you with these thoughts in my head, you bastard. You broke me. You both broke me!"

Molly shoved out of his arms and spun away, darting into the only available escape route in the ensuite, putting a door and a bolt between them before he had a chance to gather his scattered thoughts. It was an inadequate sort of shelter, offering little beyond a dead-end retreat and the privacy of a locked door behind which she could unravel.

He walked to the door, hating himself as much as the barrier she'd put between them as he braced his arms either side of the door frame.

She was crying, the sound was muffled but he could hear it clear enough. It wasn't the way she might have done in the past during one of the blessedly infrequent times they'd had a particularly angry row. Molly had never been much of a crier, more prone to angry words than tears, but when she had succumbed to them, she'd been consumed by it. Tears and sobs would shake her small frame because she felt too full of emotion to hold it in any more.

Afterwards in his arms she would apologise for what she called ugly crying. Like it was something to be ashamed of. In weird way he'd always admired her for the bravery it took to show that kind of honest emotion to the world.

These tears were different. Stifle, muffled, and hidden. His brave, beautiful girl brought down to hiding behind a door from him because he didn't have the right to see those emotions from her anymore and he had no one else to blame but himself.

Leaning in, Charles pressed his forehead against the cool wood of the door, fighting his own tears.

* * *

 _Mood music – I Built This House For you – Kris Anglis, Antidote - Faith Marie, Bruises – Lewis Calpaldi, Come To This –Natalie Turner_


	6. Chapter 6

**Author Note**

 _Many thanks for the reviews. I've re-written this chapter so many times it's becoming a blur. Hopefully it makes sense._

 **Mood music**

 _Dorian – Agnes Obel, So Far Away – Martin Garrix, Nervous (Acoustic) – James Gavin, Not About Angels – Birdy,_ _Let's Hurt Tonight – OneRepublic, Unsteady – X Ambassadors, Safe – Britt Nicole, Take Me Home – Jess Glynne_

 **Chapter Six**

* * *

 _So often the end of a love affair is death by a thousand cuts, so often its survival is life by a thousand stitches._ _ **– Robert Brault**_

* * *

Minutes passed and Charles stood with his forehead pressed against the door, hands clenching and unclenching against the door frame in an expression of his anguish. Every protective instinct in him wanted to have her in his arms, offering comfort, but that wasn't his right anymore. He was the source her pain to the extent that he'd driven his wife to crying behind a locked door.

Though it felt like an eternity later to Charles, Molly's storm of tears eventually calmed and stopped. A suffocating sort of silence filled the room and Charles wasn't sure which was worse; the sounds of her distress or the tension charged atmosphere that remained.

It reminded him of travelling home after Bangladesh. The dragging hours of travel. His repeated unsuccessful attempts to get her to answer the phone. Each failed attempt had raised his anxiety until the point it felt like a physical weight pressing on his chest. He'd driven the M4 towards Bath from Brize Norton forcing himself to stay mostly under the speed limit and growing increasingly worried that he was going to be too late. Arriving home, he'd turned his key in the lock and opened the door to step into house that was as empty and silent as a tomb.

He'd found her keys laying on floor inside of the front door. Even with reality of them in his hand, he'd still struggled to grasp what they meant. Hesitating in the hall, he'd swallowed passed a lump in his throat to call her name into the empty house. When she didn't answer, he'd rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, despite the ache in his still healing leg.

Their bedroom was where the truth of things cut through his denial and caught him like a hand squeezing his throat. Empty cupboards and drawers. Her wedding and engagements rings left behind. All her belongs that had marked her presence in the room were gone. Struggling to catch his breath, he'd sat on the end of their bed and let the fact she'd left become real.

He hadn't lingered at the house, instead heading straight to London. Of her family, Nan had been the only one willing to speak to him with any warmth. He'd been a wreck, jet-lagged and in his crumpled combats, when he turned up at her door after being turned away by Belinda. Nan had taken him in, cleaned him up, calmed him down then ripped into him for being a fool for letting what he and Molly had together slip through his fingers.

He'd tried to explain that he needed to find Molly because he'd fucked up and needed another chance. Nan's reply was pointedly blunt. She told him it didn't matter what he needed. She knew her Granddaughter and chasing after Molly, if she needed space, would likely drive her further away. He'd protested, how could he fix things if he couldn't speak to her? She'd replied that if Molly wasn't ready to listen talking _at her_ would be waste of both their time and again likely drive her away.

When he'd asked how Molly was, she'd broken him with her two-word reply. In pain.

Nan had only willingly volunteered that Molly was away on deployment again and had moved in with a friend in Aldershot before. Despite asking increasing more desperate questions, she'd refused to divulge more. He spent a sleepless night on her sofa before driving back to their empty house in Bath.

His Army contacts provided gave him what he needed to track her down because staying away hadn't been an option. Two days later, he'd found himself sitting outside her flat in his car with Nan's words circling in his head. A need to see where she was living and that she was safe made him come, but the non-descript, entry phone guarded brick building hadn't held what he needed.

Staring up at the dark windows of the first floor flat she shared with Jackie Ashton had made him realise something. Molly had found a safe place to land with her best friend. From the ruins of their relationship, she'd found the strength to pick herself up. He needed to do the same.

It would have been easier for him to present himself and his broken parts on her doorstep when she came back from deployment and beg for her to let them try again. In weaker moments, he'd seriously consider it as an option. It would also have been the worst kind of abuse of what they'd had together because really that was all he'd been doing since Elvis died–giving her his broken parts–and it had driven them both over and emotional ledge.

He needed to take responsibility for himself, finally, so he could find the parts of him that he'd lost. If he was lucky, maybe fixing himself might help him find a way to show Molly they could try again.

Sat in the office of his Command Officer of many years, red-eyed and in pieces emotionally, he'd confessing everything to Beck–how his work and home life were failing. Fears, weaknesses, mistakes. Staring at his hands clenched in his lap, he'd laid them all out in stark detail and then apologising for fucking it all up and letting everybody down.

Beck had asked him in a quietly contained but clearly effected voice: why was he apologising?

In that moment, under the scrutiny of Beck's simple question, the weight of everything had pressed him down into his seat and kept his eyes fixed on his hands. Shame, fear, embarrassment. They'd all been on his face.

Turning his meaningless wedding ring around and around on his finger; he'd forced himself to answered by saying 'because he'd lost everything'.

Beck's rough reply of ' _bullshit!_ ', was followed by a passionately delivered, but compassionately toned dressing-down for not allowing himself to be human with human frailties. Beck reminded him that the job that they all did came at a cost in terms of seeing the best and worst of humanity. That that cost effected people differently, and what he was experiencing didn't make him less of an Officer or a man.

He'd raised his eyes to meet the pale blue gaze of his CO, braced for disgust or, worse, pity, but had been met with nothing but clear-eyed compassion and resolve. No judgement. No awkwardness. He'd breathed for what felt like the first time since he entered the office.

Beck took a no-nonsense approach, seeking information and a way forward. Promising that the relevant support services would be contacted as a matter of urgency. Questioning him about leave and his current duties. How was Molly? Could Beck speak to her CO and arrange leave so they could spend time together?

Charles didn't hide from Beck's eye contact that time. He was already stripped bare. His marriage was another failure for which he was culpable. Another wordless exchange passed between them until, frowning, Beck had written something in the note book in front of him in blue fountain pen ink and the subject was moved onto the next matter at hand.

He had saluted and was about to turn to leave when Beck gave him a his final brutally honest but kindly meant piece of advice.

"You need to get your head straight and then sort things out with your wife. Don't avoid that, Charles. Molly and you were good together. Don't lose that."

Those words had set his resolve as solidly as if it was carved in granite. Everything since had been about getting passed his shame and embarrassment and throwing himself into rebuilding himself back into someone he could recognise in the mirror each morning instead of the numb hollow-eyed wretch he'd been for so long.

Nothing about it had been easy, but every day that passed without divorce papers arriving gave him the strength to push on through. Counselling, support groups and psych assessments. Analysis of mistakes, strategies for coping and finally understanding that he'd never be the same person again, not completely, was followed by a slowly growing acceptance that he could embrace being the person he'd become.

Counselling helped him find his equilibrium again. A training role at Pirbright gave him back routine and structure that built his confidence at work. The rental house in Guildford was a self-indulgence which let him feel he was close to Molly without crowding her life.

His promotion to Major followed quickly, proving his belief that seeking help for his PTSD would end his career had been every bit as much bullshit as Molly had accused. Back then, he'd been so lost he'd believed he couldn't survive without the uniform. With new clarity, he could see he could have survived either with or without it, but clinging to it had cost his wife and almost his son.

The training role gave him purpose, but it was his welfare role, working with personnel going through the same struggles as he himself that had given him passion and belief in his career again. He saw himself giving something back again and that had completed his healing.

He turned, leaning his back against the door and slid down to sit on the floor, cursing himself for being all kinds of an idiot. Molly was here now, and that was all he'd want for more than a year and he was fucking it up all over again.

Starting with a remark about him being a married man had been provocative, if true. It didn't matter that he still wore his ring or that he'd carried Molly's around in his breast pocket ever since he'd returned from Bangladesh. It _had_ mattered in the moment when he looked at the contrast between his ringed finger and Molly's naked one. Then his loneliness had burned like acid on exposed skin. As had her defensiveness and truthful accusations for which he had no defence and her justified pain for which he had no solution.

It was his fault. All his fault. He couldn't deny that. Therapy meant he understood the mechanics of PTSD as his body and brain's chemical response to trauma but hadn't help him understand how his life had gone so far to shit without him realising and calling a halt to what, looking back, were crazy choices. As much as he tried, he couldn't find a way to meld the _him_ that had pursued Georgie before he and Molly had called time on their struggling married, with the person he was now who simply missed his wife.

Now he was stuck in a self-inflicted impasse and he had not one clue what to say next. Raking his hands through his hair, he laid his head back against the door with a muffled thump.

"Is that your plan then? To sit me out brooding and blocking the door?"

Charles turned towards the welcome sound of her voice finding inappropriate humour in her sarcastic words despite the tension between them, because the response was just so out of left field and blessedly, familiarly _Molly._

She was right. In the absence of other sensible courses of action, that had been his choice–to sit her out. Not that it was a plan exactly. Molly knew him too well. At least she had before Elvis' death re-wrote the rules between them. After that, he hadn't known himself so what chance had his wife had?

"What's yours? The window?"

"Maybe, except I'm wearing a dress and we're on the second floor and all."

Despite himself, Charles sniggered. It was a light snort of sound. Pulling them both back to memories of Afghanistan when being together had been forbidden and yet infinitely simpler than this twisted mess of emotions and blame. The thought killed his fleeting amusement leaving heavier emotions behind.

"All of this is such a fucking mess, Molly."

"Can't fault your logic there." Molly replied, a dry edge to her voice.

"You said you'd been in accident? What happened?"

"Me, hiding in the job. That's what happened. I'd found out about you chasing her at Headley and decided maybe I needed to follow your lead. Being together was draining the life out of both of us, wasn't it? You kept runnin' off on Tour. Thought I'd give it a try."

"It was never about running away from you."

"Was what it felt like at the time."

"Why wasn't I contact…afterwards?"

"I told my CO I'd call you. I was banged up but doing okay, so they skipped notifying you as next of kin."

"You didn't call, though, did you?"

"I called, the subject just never came up in the end. We talked about chests of drawers instead. That's how difficult just talkin' got between at the end. I was sitting in a Med Centre in Kabul and we talked about furniture instead a car accident."

"I thought you were out there to train?"

"I was, but I might have gone and volunteered for something a bit different. My failed attempt to be brilliant, isn't that how you always said it? I went on an SF mission with Captain McClyde and some of Elvis' old team. Spanner, Peanut, Dyno."

"You went on a mission with Bones?" She could clearly hear his disapproval through the clipped snap of his words, and snapped back.

"Why not, _Charlie?_ Or is it only flat arse Lane with her perky tits and perfect teeth that's allowed? After I found out about you and her, maybe I wanted to see what I was missing with an S.F. Officer. Won't lie, Bones was interested."

The door rattled under the force of Charles shoving off of it to stand up as he muttered _bastard,_ with some considerable venom under his breath.

"Yeah, he was, God rest his soul and all that. Got to say he had no love for you."

"The feeling is entirely fucking mutual."

"Did wonder if having the wife of his apart arch-nemesis on a mission played a part in me being picked. Didn't matter in the end. I wasn't interested in being another notch on his overused bed-post. I went because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and be better than _her_."

"Molly–"

"In the end, it wasn't even about that either. The mission was text book, it was the journey back to Kabul that went to shit." Molly said quietly, almost melancholy

Charles stopped his agitated pacing in response to the tone in her voice and returned to the closed door, leaning in once again to catch her words.

"Molly, please come out."

"I called you that last time from Afghan. I was in a hospital bed, cracked collar bone and dehydrated. I was lucky, considering the way that Landy rolled down that hill."

She ignored his request, too caught inside of her own head as memories of the crash pulled her in easily. Sounds, smells, the fear. The split-second thought, as the Land Rover was tumbling down the hill that these might be her final moments. Her regrets because of the way things were left between them. The agony and helplessness of watching Dyno fade away under her hands.

"I came so close dying and it wasn't about bullet or bombs. It was fluky blown-out tyre. The difference between me walking away and his cerebral haemorrhage was that I wore I seat belt."

 _Fuck. Dyno, she was talking about that accident._ Charles thought. He hadn't known him well personally except for being part of Elvis' squad in Afghanistan after Nepal. Or as another name tragically mentioned in a toast to absent friends along with Elvis and Bones on nights out with Spanner and Blue.

Molly distressing call out of his name and the nightmare. It all made more sense now. With a rising sense of urgency, Charles rattled the door handle, trying to catch her attention.

"Molly, please open the door."

"I had to watch him die. It was like Smurf all over again. Watching the life drain out of someone. He wasn't really lucid most of time, but he talked on and off to his wife. Said how much he loved her. Said he was sorry. Over and over. When they pulled me out, I was covered in his blood and he was stone cold.

There was a long silence then the sound of the door being unbolted. Charles moved back, flooded with relief as it swung open. Molly looked tiny as she stepped out of the shadows of the bathroom into the lit bedroom.

"I was in the wreckage with him for hours."

Her eyes–sea-green and huge in her pale face–were always so expressive, almost to the point of being conversational in the way they reflected her inner emotions. In that moment they were full of every facet of the trauma she was describing.

"I decided something in that car wreck, that life's too bloody fragile to hold onto meaningless shit. You were all I wanted, needed. So, I called you afterward, wanting to ask if separating was really what you wanted. It was like talking to a stranger."

She put her hands up towards her face, fingers steepled and shaking as they lay across her nose and mouth. Two lonely tears rolled down both cheeks and she swept them away impatiently.

Moving passed him, she sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders stooped as she stared down at the carpet between her planted feet. She looked up, running her hand through her loose hair, scooping it up with her right hand and twisted it into a silky rope of curls before leaving it to trail down one side of her neck. A common every day gesture. Nothing exception on superficial observation, and something he'd observed Molly do many hundreds of times when they'd been together. Yet it floored him with a flood of loneliness for all the lost familiar moments they'd once shared.

"You said you were fine…working. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. You were fine, working and with her. Fine in a way you couldn't be _fine_ at home with me anymore. The words I wanted to say… needed to say… won't come. So, we talked about furniture and it was finally over.

"All I wanted was you to say you missed me. Or that you were havin' doubts about us splitting up. Instead you told me to take anything I wanted because you wanted me to go."

"It wasn't like that."

"It was exactly like that, Charles. Not long afterwards I found out you'd got what you'd wanted all along and had sex with George. There was no going back after that. I used to wonder sometime if it had just been sex. Lust with a stranger while we were struggling, might I have been able to get my head round it."

"It was just sex, in the end."

"But is wasn't. You had feelings for Georgie, for a long time. Maybe even longer than you realise. It's not nice second guessing yourself. Trying to remember if there were any earlier signs I missed. Ways you'd maybe unconsciously shown an interest in Georgie. Digging through memories when we used to double date with Elvis, or if you talked about her more than the rest of the platoon when you and her first went on tour to Kenya."

"I'm sorry I made you doubt us that much, but you wouldn't have found anything. Things only changed between us after Elvis died, and even then it took a long while before being over protective shifted into anything inappropriate."

"I used to worry, when we first go together, when you'd realise you got yourself stuck with a nobody like me because I never really understood why we ended up together. It seemed like a bit of fairy-tale at the time.

He wanted to shake her. How many times had he told her she was everything to him when they were together? That he'd woken up most days trying to working out how he'd gotten so bloody lucky to find _her_.

"It was never like that for me, Molly. Never. You have always been all that I wanted."

"Then why did you turn to her?"

Charles made himself hold the intensity of her gaze because he wanted her to understand he wasn't lying. But the simple truth was that even after hours of therapy and fighting to find himself again, he still couldn't answer that one question to his full satisfaction.

"As pathetic as it sounds, I'm not sure that I truly understand why."

"Then, I think my version of why is perhaps more believable than yours, don't you think?"

"You're wrong, so very wrong."

"Then explain it to me, because I'm out of answers except that one."

Despite the fact that her body language was not welcoming him to be close, he was compelled move, and did so by kneeling at her feet. Not touching, but close enough to see the golden flecks in her eyes.

"When we first got together, I promised you the only thing that I wanted was to make you happy."

"And you did. You were my whole bloody world until it went to shit."

"Back in Afghanistan on your first tour, before we got together, I talked to Elvis about you. How I was developing feelings for someone in my chain of command. He took the piss out of me, of course. Charlie James stuffed-shirt, lover of rule & regs falling in love with my Medic in a war zone. But for two minutes out of twenty in which he took the piss out of me on a Skype call, he said, that life was too short to walk away from proper love."

A small smile curled Molly's lips fleetingly. "Elvis Harte, fuck muppet and philosopher."

As it always did, hearing Elvis' name stung and he had to take a moment to collect himself. He shared a sad smile with Molly.

"Yep. He was all those things. I still miss the stupid bastard."

"Me, too." Molly lifted her hand from her lap, almost as though she was going to reach out for him, then pulled it back. Straightening her posture, she shifted back.

"That's how I felt when we first got together. You were all I wanted. Making you happy, being happy with you. Everything with us was just blissfully simple."

"Not how it ended up though, was it."

"After Elvis died, in my head I wasn't doing that any more. Failing at the job, failing as a husband and father. You kept telling me get help, and I took that the be more failure. As time went on, I could see how unhappy I was making you

"You were doing well otherwise, thriving at work, Sam adores you, hell you'd even won over Rebecca. What did I have to give you anymore but anxiety and sadness? Letting you go made more sense than fighting for you. I always knew you'd be bloody brilliant. In my head I was dragging you down with me. When you started to say you were having doubt about us, it just seemed to make miserable sense. Why wouldn't you. I was failing in my own life and you'd out grown me.

"After getting counselling, talking it out, several things starting making sense. I apparently have a problem with control."

"You were never controlling, Charles. You've met my Dad, the way he says do this and my mum jumps, that's controlling."

"Not controlling of you. Control of the world around me, control of myself. I apparently don't have a healthy balance when it comes to things not working out the way I need or want them to. You could say I'm a walking stereotype of stiff-upper lip, suppressing difficult emotions and ignoring the consequences. After Elvis… well, that strategy caused more damage than I can say."

"I know I become unbearable to live with, inward looking and joyless. I stopped being able to connect with you and Sam at home. I see all that now."

"You seemed to _connect_ just fine with Georgie."

"But I didn't. Not really. If I did it wasn't in any health way for either of us. It's clear now that I was depression because of the PTSD. I've come to think of depression as a very selfish sort of if illness. At least I was selfish when I suffered it. I had this fear and guilt about letting people down. Then I couldn't think straight around the anxiety it caused. I told myself I was pushing you and Sam away to protect you, except I wasn't really protecting you I was protecting me. Refusing to get help, letting it get worse was selfish and me protecting me again.

"You're right. I did pursue Georgie, and it wasn't because she gave me any encouragement. At least not at first. You and I were fracturing and in my mixed-up way I saw what I thought I needed in Georgie and went after it.

"Elvis' death was my fault, I needed to make amends. That's what I told myself at points. What I really needed was a way to hide from everything going wrong in every other part of my life. That was Georgie. I not sure if it makes it worst, knowing, but nothing physical happened until we were over but I did chase her before then."

"After the river jump in Bangladesh, we were kept in the Med Centre for 24 hours observation. Next morning, I woke up in a private room with your name on my lips and Georgie sitting beside my bed saying that that was okay. That she'd dreamed about Elvis just last night. She didn't mind that you were still on my mind. That she understood.

"She didn't love me any more than I loved her.

"I wanted to be sick when I realised what I'd done. I pushed you and Sam away until you left. Pursued Georgie while she was vulnerable out of some sort of sick need to give myself a new purpose after Elvis's death. All because I needed to feel like I mattered again."

"I was ill, yes, but I was also a selfish shit to both of you. I supposed I'm being selfish sitting here, telling you all this while asking you let us try again, but I am asking."

The urgency in his voice had a simple ring on truth to it. Like when he'd looked her dead in the eye in a concrete shack in Afghanistan and told her she was the last thing he wanted to see. Everything between them had finally solidified with that one statement. Being in the middle of a war zone, Smurf's confusing confession of love, the hurt cause by his omission of facts, rank, wealth (or lack of), age, experience all of the background noise and distractions between them fell away, leaving clarity. They'd choose each other and to ignore the rest. Now he was asking for the simplest and most complicated thing that he could. For her to choose him again.

"We're not who we were any more, I know that. I can't count the number of times I wished I could wake up and find it was all a bloody nightmare. You be there in our kitchen burning toast and complain about my coffee habit, and Elvis would be at the end of a phone bleating on about Georgie. Then everything could fall back into its place and I could have peace again. But it can't."

He reached out to touch her face, and she shied away.

"Charles don't, please."

"I'm asking you to give me a chance to show you who I am now, and to let me get to know you again. Please, Molly."

"It's too late, what we had is gone."

"I don't want what we had, I want us to start again. To building something stronger."

"You had feelings for Georgie, too. What about her?"

"I did, but it wasn't love. For either of us. It was more like needing to be needed. Or to find purpose again. I never stopped loving you, I just thought you didn't need me anymore."

"You're asking me to trust you again, while I'm still sticking myself back together after the last time I trusted you."

Charles moved closer, instinctively wanting contact with her to settle both their galloping doubts and anxieties. He rested his hands on the bed on either side of her knees.

"Yes I am."

"You think that's a fair request?"

"No. In fact, I know it's not, but I'm still asking." There was an edge of growing vulnerability under his dogged reply.

"You didn't need or want me when things got hard. You pushed me away but I pushed you away too. What if things get hard again? We broke, Charles. One of us needs to be strong and admit that so we can walk away before one of us breaks again."

The look of panic on his formerly stoic face just about finished Molly then and there. When he reached for her face with shaking hands and a pleading expression on his face, she allowed it. He moved so close that the warmth of chest was pressed against her knees and she could see how dark his eyes had become, his pupils wide and black with stress.

Two warring voices spoke loudly in her head. One saying her statement was justified and the other that she was hurting herself by wounded him.

"You pushed me away, but I did the same to you. Don't you see? We both caused this."

There is was, her biggest fear because the truth of the matter was that she saw herself as the weakest link. A stronger person would have seen him struggling and stayed and fought for their relationship. She wasn't that person. Not then, probably not now. Her insecurities were what she'd listened to in the end. When it became too much–even before she'd found out about Georgie–she'd told him he needed to leave.

As much as she could rage and sob at him for his part, she couldn't escape from the fact that she helped to break them too.

"That doesn't matter, can't you see that?"

Sudden she had ten different voices talking in her head in a claustrophobic crush of sound. Layer over layer of words with meanings and sentiments yelling for attention.

Georgie saying he'd was like her, surviving. Jacs saying he hadn't always been a bastard. Brains, on the phone that horrific night when she found out, saying he didn't understand why they do that to her. Her Nan pleading with her to just speak to Charlie.

She wanted to press her hands to her ears and yell at them to shut up and let her think, just for a minute.

Instead she looked into his face and remembered the hundred different ways that he had once represented safe for her. Feeling the touch of his fingers against her face, was like a siren song to her bruised heart, calling her back to memories of what they'd once had. Safe wasn't something Molly had felt in a long time. That fact alone was exhausting.

"I'm so tired of thinking and being angry and feeling shit, I just so fucking tired."

"I know, I feel the same."

Charles drew her towards him because he can see the strain of the thoughts rushing through her head and the fatigue weighing her down.

The familiar scent of his aftershave flooded her with sense memories of what home used to feel like when they were together. Possibly the more tactile of the two of them, he'd always been read to gather her close. With her head against his chest, he'd wrap his height and lean strength around her and make her feel so small, yet protected.

As in the memory, Molly's forehead came into contact with the centre of his chest with a soft thud as she pressed against his heart and her fingers clawed into his uniform shirt."

"I hate you."

"I know. I love you."

His arm came around her back, strong and familiar and he lay his ahead against the top of Molly's.

"I still hate you."

"I still love you."

She shook her head from side to side as his hand touched the heavy silk of her curls. He raked his fingers through her hair with familiar, soothing strokes. Providing a comfort that had been missing for them both for too long.

"What are we doing to each other?" she asked without heat. Sounding small and unsure at the same time.

His pulled her closer into the shelter of his body. The vulnerability she'd been hiding under anger was upsetting. He wanted her to feel safe again. To take back what his illness and decisions took–for her to be bright and brilliant again.

"We're trying to find a way back to each other."

He moved them, so he was up off the floor sitting next to her on the bed. Molly lifted her head from his chest in response. They were so close that they're practically sharing air.

Those huge eyes of hers that he's seen in so many different ways–dazed with lust, wide with tears, sparking with humour and spirit–were still speaking to him. Showing her doubts and conflict but most of all exhaustion because that's the problem with fighting yourself, internal turmoil burns the fiercest and takes the heaviest toll.

"Why? After everything why?"

"Because you're the last thing I want to see, and you once upon a time ditto agreed."

Facial expression, dark determined eyes, body curled around her own–everything about him was enforcing that he meant what he said. His single-minded determination was scaring her a little because there was a quiet voice in her head that was reminding her that maybe she wanted to believe what he was saying was possible.

Fighting herself, she shook her head mutely because she didn't quite have the strength to summon the word no from her mouth.

Charles admired her flare of stubbornness. The old Molly shining through despite her vulnerability. He had to push passed it and through her last defence because he knew if he failed this time, there won't be another chance. He had one weapon left in his arsenal. The one thing she could not deny. He waited, watched and kept his distance. She was here tonight because she came to him. That had to mean something.

"I love you, Molly. I want our life together back. If you don't want that on some level, why did you come here?"

While paradoxically drawing closer to him so they were almost face to face. She made her last stand in words and she meant them to sting.

"To exorcise a ghost."

"You're lying." His hands cradling her face tightened to the point of almost painful, then soften again just as quickly. "You have to be."

One hand dropped to her back pulling her in against his chest, as though he was reassuring himself that she'd let him hold her closer. She didn't fight him, in fact, she strengthened his hold by placing her hands on his neck, balancing herself half on half off his lap, pushing herself physically closer while trying to use words to push him away. She was conflicted, and he was right–she was lying.

Molly hadn't come to his house for anything as tangible as an ending, despite her words. She'd came because she needed a physical form around which to wrap Georgie's words and assurances and the what if's, recriminations and doubts they'd woken up from inside of her previous resolve to leave things in the past.

"I know you still love me."

Testing his resolve with pointedly hurtful words was her last line of defence in a long, failing war. She was exhausted, mentally, physically in every way that broke a person down and pushed them to extremes. Even as her defences were buckling, she could see his force of purpose growing.

His eyes burned into hers, dark and determined. "Tell me you're lying."

The thoughts, the plans, the shear physical effort or getting through each day since she'd left was exhausting. Everyone had a limit and Molly had pushed herself past her own long ago through stubborn force of will alone. It was seductive, the temptation to shut up her brain and submit to wants for once instead of what her survival instincts demanded.

Moments like this weren't about planning and pushing forward. They were about needs and wants and surrendering to vulnerabilities because sometime life was like that–too hard to fight. In the end, it wasn't even a choice. It was a nameless ethereal imperative and Molly surrendered.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author Note**

 _Merry Christmas! As ever, many thanks for the reviews. Sorry for those of you who where late for work because of the timing of the posting of the last a chapter, though you did make me smile._

 _This chapter skirts M rating territory, so if that isn't your thing, you might want to skip down the page or avoid._

 **Mood music**

 _Bare – Wildes, Illuminate – Wildes, Shelter – Birdy, Possession – Sarah McLachlan._

 **Chapter Seven**

* * *

 _Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before. -_ _ **Mignon McLaughlin**_

* * *

The kiss was all consuming. Filled with a years' worth of absence, loss, love and anger. Molly poured all of her fury and hurt into it like he was an emotional well waiting to be filled and she the source of water. They'd always been compatible in this way but this was something else–a naked flame to petrol explosive–and both were pulled into it willingly.

It lacked finesse, considering they were a couple with more than three years of emotional connection and physical familiarity. Where once there might have been subtle touching and teasing seduction, this was a heated tumble of limbs as they sprawled across the bed.

Charles' uniform shirt and t-shirt were discarded along the way with Molly's dress as he chased her body towards the mattress. The body heat warmed metal of his dog-tags trailing across Molly's chest added to the building sensation of her skin feeling too tight for comfort as she arched towards him. Her body was bowed in perfect synchronicity with his lips as they trailed down the side of her neck.

Her hands fumbling with his belt nearly sent him mad while at the same time rang a warning in his head, even though his body was craving for her to continue. He vocalised that need with a needful groan.

"Jesus, _Molly."_

She had his fly open and his combats riding low on his hips before he got his head together enough to remember it's earlier warning of a need for words.

"Molly, love…wait, please."

With a determined wriggle, she was out of her underwear and his were shoved down with his trousers with a slide of her foot against the back of his thighs. Charles lifted himself up so he was hovering over her and she protested the loss of his skin against her own with another upwards arch of her and while pulling down with her hands on the small of his back.

Molly, fuck…wait!"

Molly's answering roll and grind of her hips made her feelings very clear on the subject of slowing things down and had Charles throwing his head back with a groan as he tried to catch her hands which were wandering with distracting determination south down his back and behind.

"Sweetheart, stop, stop… slow down."

Catching her hands that were franking driving him dangerously close to the right-side of what could be a wrong decision, he looked down at her face, and lost himself in the vision of his wife. Head flung back against the pillow, her hair was dark halo against her flushed skin.

"Molly. Look at me."

Eyes, previously tight shut, opened somnolently slowly and were darker than normal–a grey moss green–unfocused and heavy-lidded. She pulled her hands out of his gentle hold and wrapped them around the back of his head. The pull of her fingers in his hair provided a delicious sting of pain to his overheated skin.

"I don't want to slow down."

She lifted up, tucking her face into his neck.

"Can't you feel it?"

The heat of her breath against the skin of his neck as she spoke was agonising. Her mouth and teeth slid tortuously slowly down his neck stole his breath away and he was lost again.

Already cradled between her spread thighs, it was easy for her hand to slide between them and position him by her heat.

"I don't want to think or talk about. I just want this. Don't you?"

Molly clawed her fingernails into his buttocks as she shifted her hips up in provocative offer. The responding roll of hips was involuntary as he dropped his head into the damp curve of her neck as they connected.

"Fuck, Molly. You're driving me crazy."

Through the slight sting and stretch of unused muscles, Molly rolled her hips building a rhythm that didn't stay slow for long as his followed where she led.

"Good!"

Charles lifted his head eager to watch the pleasure chase across her face, but her eyes were shut again. Closing him out even as her body lifted and fell in time with his, pulling him in, then sending him away so he could return again.

What he'd called their kinship once upon a time; the way she could drive him to heated temper with her stubbornness, warm him from the inside out with a smile, or break his heart with her tears–all had been lost after Elvis' plunge from a building. He'd been emotionally absent and numb for so long. This act between them–for him– had to be about more than the physicality of pleasure and release. For him, this was about connecting–eye contact, emotion, bonding again.

"I need to see your eyes, look at me…please."

There was a pleading quality to his voice that Molly couldn't deny. She did as he asked, opening her eyes to meet his and he was there–so present. Dark eyes intense and watchful and gently asking for something she was trying to avoid by chasing for a physical release–the emotion of everything that had happened between them.

The connection with her was everything to him in that moment, providing solace and yet heavy with old pain. He slowed the previously frantic pace she'd set, forcing himself to concentrate outside of his body's over heated reaction because he had her under and around him after so long.

Throwing her head back, Molly tipped her hips up to his trying to forces him into a faster rhythm as her eyes shut again. Charles knew what she was trying to do, chase for a physical coupling to run from the pain of things. He'd taken that path himself for far too long, running away from his life as it crumbled around his feet, but he was done with running.

Taking his weight onto his elbows, he stopped the movement between them. Holding her face in his palms, he dropped kisses on her face and neck while murmuring her name as shifted under him agitatedly, trying to get him to move with her again.

"Molly, I'm here, look at me, please."

Distracted, she opened her eyes again to find his face closer, and his expression gentle but determined.

"You're so beautiful." he said, answering the restless rocking of her hips with a different, gentler rhythm. "I need to see you."

The slower pace he was controlling with such quiet, open eyed contact was intense and Molly was struggling to keep her barriers in place. He was silently asking for something that she was scared to give again but she can feel herself giving it anyway. Yielding to his pleading for emotion not just sensation.

"I'm sorry we lost us. I love you."

There was such honesty in his voice. Clear and unpolluted by guilt or regrets– it contained only the truth. It brought tears to her eyes and so much emotion–confusion, grief, love. Too much emotion–she was filled up with it.

He wanted to ask her if she loved him, but didn't because everything written on her face. He didn't need the words. Her eye wide, wet and vulnerable and seeing so her so exposed was heart breaking, but the emotion was still there. Mixed up with anxieties and broken trust, but still there.

"It's okay. I love you. It's okay."

Distraction. Pleasure. A place to hide. He wanted to protect her more than anything else. If that meant giving her what she thought she needed, he was willing because, in the end, all he'd ever wanted was to give her the world. Charles rolled over onto his back, hips still moving restlessly under her, but gentler until she found her centre of gravity.

"I'm here. I love you." One hand held her face gently as she began to move at first tentatively and then with more confidence. "I'll always love you. Take what you need."

She followed where he led willingly with every downward tip of her hips chasing his, rhythmic claw of fingers into the skin of his shoulders and soft grunt of breathy reaction as her weight fell against him and then lift away but her pain remained alive and loud in her eyes.

She folded down over him her rhythm suddenly urgent as she tucked her head into his neck, eyes tight closed again, blocking out the world outside of them moving together.

Then it was everything for both of them. The slide if skin against skin. Mingling breaths and the sweet scent of fresh sweat and urgency. A fast climb to a pinnacle of feeling that exploded into sublime, blinding pleasure then calm.

 **ooOOoo**

The sensation of de ja vu rolled over them both in the silent minutes that followed. Molly was sprawled boneless against his sweat dampened chest as he held her securely against his length with one hand cradling the back of her head and the other spread across her lower back.

Listening to his racing heart and rapid breathing slowly return to normal, Molly was rumpled, warm bundle of nerves as conflicting feels of both the rightness and wrongness of the moment plagued her thoughts. She wondered if, like her, he didn't want to be the first speak because the silence between, like a fragile truce, was a safer place in which to stay than turmoil that words would cause.

Thing was, she might be able to hide from spoken words by keeping silent, but she couldn't hide from her own thoughts and Molly let the reality of what they had just done sink in with crystal clear clarity.

Stolen moments from their past condensed into words of rage and regret, allowed to boil over into sex didn't fundamentally change anything between them. The broken parts of her were still broken. She had to own that and she was left with feelings of regret for an action that hadn't so much been a decision, in the moment, as a need. A fundamental need to connect.

Nothing had changed between them.

That had been the problem after she'd left. Despite all the very deliberate changes she'd made to her life, she remained trapped somewhere between this sting of the loss of what they'd had together and raging at the part he'd played in that loss. She'd tried so hard to stretch toward grieving and then recovery that should have followed but it remained out of reach. Some burdens she just didn't seem to be able to let go.

Nothing had changed. What the fuck was supposed to happen next?

With that thought repeating, panic started to blossom inside her chest. Slowly at first, gently and insidiously unfurling like a flower on a poisonous plant set to attract prey to its peril.

Interrupting her tumbling thoughts, Charles lifted Molly so they were laying side by side facing each other on the same pillow.

Fingers stroking down her cheek, he said softly, "I know you're scared, but we need to talk. Properly."

It was all there in his eyes, bitter chocolate dark, and warm with a depth of feeling that she hadn't seen since before they lost Elvis. He was lit up from the inside.

 _What the fuck had she done?_

"I'm going to make a brew, then we'll talk."

She nodded, lying. He accepted the lie with a slow smile and warm press of his lips to hers before moving to stand.

She snagged the sheet to cover herself, realising he's was still mostly dressed as he fastened his combat trousers and retrieved his shirt and t-shirt from the floor. Both were tangled together, with her dress and short leather jacket such had been their haste to strip.

Clothed versus naked, Molly felt suddenly vulnerable and got lost in her own head with the feelings about the wrongness of her choices.

He held his hand out to her, palm up and welcoming her to make contact with him again.

"Come downstairs with me?"

Molly shook her head again, struggling to find her voice and worrying it would betray her lack of confidence.

"In a minute. I need to clean up a bit."

The same smile lit his face, warm and genuine. "I'll be back in a minute."

Watching him walk away filled he with irrational fright, and his name tumbled from her lips before she had a chance to check herself.

"Charles."

Half way to the bedroom door, he stopped and turned. He returned to the bed and sat down, taking her face in his hands gently.

"You okay?"

She wanted to say, no she wasn't and a million and one other scary words about wants and regrets, but the words never come out, dying in her throat before they were ever given life because of the churning panic building inside of her.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

A frown appeared on his face and she knew he didn't believe what she was saying, but didn't argue the point, instead closing his eyes and pressing his forehead against her own. The familiarity of the gesture about finished her then and there because it was such a Charles before Elvis' death thing to do. His way of saying ten different things without words. It broke her heart because it had been so long since he last did it, and there wouldn't be another time.

"I'm not sure that you are"–he pressed a kiss to her forehead– "but that's okay. Brew, and then we'll talk. Yes?"

She nodded, lying again, then watched with wide, wet eyes as he walked out of the room. The sound of his footsteps heading down the stair spurred her into action as she climbed out of bed and dressed in a hurry. Scrabbling in the bedside cabinet she found his habitually kept notepad and pen and scribbled out four words before leaving the note pad open on the bed.

With her heart hammering in her ears loud enough to hurt, she run down the stairs willing her steps to be quiet but quick. The kitchen was as the back of the house and contained her shoes and handbag but the front door meant escape. Anything but clear minded, she hurried towards the door. Having to forcing herself to concentrate around her rising panic, she turned the Yale lock and opened the door just wide enough to squeeze through and closed it silently behind her with shaking hands.

Guessing the likely layout of the houses on the street, she darted through the side gate into the back garden at the same point as she heard the front door open and bang back against its hinges followed by the sound of running feet on the front path.

"Molly!" he yelled loud enough to make jump guiltily as she shrank back against the brick side wall of house. "Molly!"

Swallowing passed a lump in her throat at the urgency in his voice, she strained her eyes to see passed the pool of light from the kitchen window towards the end of garden. Her guess was confirmed as correct as she saw the dark outline of a back garden gate.

"Fuck-sake, Molly, don't bloody do this." he said quietly but so that she could still hear. It reminded her just how close he was. Two steps threw the side gate and he'd be able to find her if she didn't move soon.

"Molly, where are you?" he yelled again, and she started guiltily.

The worry in his voice reinforced inside her the heavy sense of guilt that might have glued her feet to the ground but for the desperate, adrenaline fuelled imperative to flee screaming in her head. She turned away from his need for her to return and instead cross the short lawn.

The distant but still loud of a door slamming and a car engine roaring to life gave her every reason to run faster as she drowned out her guilt with pure blind panic.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author Note**

 _Many thanks for the reviews and happy New Year!_

 **Mood music**

 _Beautifully Unfinished – Ella Henderson, Every Breath You Take–Denmark + Winter (remake of Police original), Rescue – Lauren Daigle, Already Gone – Sleeping At Last, Saturn – Sleeping At Last, Skipping Stones – Claire De Lune_

 **Chapter Eight**

* * *

 _Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic._ _ **– Annais Nin**_

* * *

An inability to catch her breath without pain had her come to gasping stop somewhere in the centre of town. If any of the late-night revellers heading home noticed anything unusual in a small woman, bare foot and out of breath outside of Guildford train station, nobody made any sign of it.

Molly didn't have a clue where she was relative to how to find their hotel and without a handbag, she was mobile less. Looking around for inspiration she spotted a phone box, and jogged towards it despite the painful stitch in her side.

Rooting through her pockets yielded a small amount of change. Chewing on her lips nervously, she pressed digits of Jackie's mobile number and waited preying that Jackie would answer. Jackie didn't disappoint as her voice exploded loudly scolding and full of worry down the phone line.

"Molly bloody James, were the _hell_ have you been? We got back to the hotel to find you missing. I've been worried off my head you silly cow. You didn't answer your mobile, Matt was about ready to call the police then your husband calls Matt's mobile demanding to know where you are. He's on the phone to him now. What the fuck is going on?"

"I'm sorry. I fucked up, Jacs. I've fucked up so bad." Molly replied tearfully in an upset rush of whispered words that Jackie struggled to understand. "I went to his house…he…we… I fucking panicked and bolted. Shit, Jacs, I can't catch my breath–"

Molly pressed her forehead against a pane of glass in the wall of the phone box trying to think around her galloping heart rate and gasps of breath. The cold of the glass stung her skin making her suddenly realise that she was actually shaking and chilled despite her recent run through the streets of central Guildford.

"None of that matters, okay?" Jackie said is quietly, all anger gone from her voice. "I just need you to breath for me okay. In and out okay. Nice and slow, okay?"

"I'm such a fuck-up, Jacs. I'm lost, I don't know how to get back to the hotel from here."

"Doesn't matter, we'll come get you. Do you know where you are?" Molly could hear the muffled sound of Matt's voice in the background.

"I'm asking, Matt. Wait a minute." Jackie said.

"He called Matt? Shit, Jacs, I've dragged Matt into this mess too. I'm such a fuck-up."

"None of that matters, Mols. Just tell me where you are and we'll come and get you okay?"

"Shit, shit, shit."

"Molly, listen to me, you need to breath for me okay? None of that matters at all. Just breath, okay? Nice and slow. That's good, nice and slow." The sound of Molly's rapid breathing was starting to worry Jackie, as she waved a hovering Matt away with an impatient hand against his chest. "Just tell me where you are and we'll come and get you." Jackie said more firmly.

"I'm outside the train station in a phone box."

"Okay, good. We're not far– What, Matt? For fuck-sake don't bloody–" Jackie's voice faded as though her hand was over the receiver.

"Jacs, are you still there?"

"Molly?" Matt voice said, calm and authoritative, every inch the Sergeant taking charge of a situation. "We're not far. We're going to tab it down their now. Don't leave okay?"

"I'm sorry." Molly said. "You shouldn't have been dragged into this."

"Doesn't matter. I just want to know you're safe. Okay? Can you stay on the phone for me, we're not far?"

"I don't have much money left." Molly said. "The call is gonna cut off soon–"

A draft of cold air flowed across her back and a warm hand on her shoulder made Molly twist around in fright and straight into the familiar strength of Charles' chest. When his arm moved around her waist, she didn't stop to think and just let herself sink against his warmth instinctively.

"Christ, Molly. You're freezing." he said, holding her tighter with one arm while taking the phone from her shaking hand. "I need to get you warmed up."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." she babbled, not sure to whom she was really apologising. Charles who shushed her gently, or Matt who was urgently saying her name down the phone.

"It doesn't matter." Charles said softly, stroking her hair back from her face, before turning his attention to the receiver in his hand.

"Geddings, I've got her." His tone to Matt was significantly less warm–all Officer– and he hung up abruptly before pulling her gentle out of the door and swinging her up in his arms. The journey to where his Evoke was parked on double yellows was short, and the random thought flitted through Molly's scatter mind that it was impressive that he was managing to carry her weight with no outward sign of strain; given his leg injury from Belize.

Charles set her down sideways in the front passenger seat of the car. With one hand on her thigh, as though to hold her in place, her reached behind the seat and rummaged around in a bag and pulled out a shirt and socks. He dropped the shirt over her head, with a quiet apology for it being dirty.

Molly slipped her arms into the sleeves without comment. The garment drowned her, but she crossed her arms across her chest, hands hidden inside the length selves and pulled the warmth of the garment and the smell of him that lingered on the material closer for comfort.

Socks were pulled onto her cold feet, and he tried to make her smile with another soft comment about them at least being clean, but Molly doesn't answer, instead focusing her attention on a pulled thread on the sleeve of his shirt.

He hunkered down so they were at eye level and balanced himself with a hand on the leather of the car seat on either side of her hips. He was crowding her a little and Molly realised that should be making her feel something other than comforted.

A finger under her chin lifted her gaze to his and his expression was pensive, forehead plucked into frown lines as he studied her silently for several minutes. Molly lost her nerve first, dropping her eyes away from the heavy scrutiny of his dark eyes to instead focus on her fingers plucking at the loose thread again. With a sigh, Charles pressed his lips to her forehead.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his large palm cupping her cold cheek.

The same feeling of rightness filled Molly again followed quickly by confusion because there was a large part of her that wanted to lean forward and close the few inches between them to press her face into his neck and let him take the weight of her fear and confusion. She knew it would be a relief to be held, even for a shot time and it's was so damn tempting to just surrender, finally. She's conflicted and the depth of it has her struggling to fight tears. She knows she wants and what she needs to do for protection, neither choice is compatible with the other.

"I think you're supposed to reply: 'why wouldn't I be'." he said, trying for gentle humour but it makes Molly hurt for both of them even more because he's trying so hard and she just can't meet him in the middle.

Dark lashes fanned across her pale, chilled skin, hiding eyes she knows say too much to a husband that she needs to keep distant. She felt his breath against her cheek and had the sense that he'd moved closer again as his thumb wiped away a tear that had escaped from under her lashes.

"Please don't cry, I never could bare it, not from you." he said, his voice heavy with upset. "Molly–"

The sound of running feet interpreted his murmuring and he moved away, straightening to stand. Molly looked up and beyond his broad shoulders to see Matt running to stop beside the open car door, with Jackie a couple of paces behind.

"Thank god, Molly! Are you okay?" Matt asked.

In the urgency of the moment his attention was on Molly's pale face rather than on the tall officer standing partially blocking his view until he noticed the stiffness of the other man's stance, and the way he shifted to block his view of Molly fully in a very deliberate and protective way.

"Geddings." Charles said, his voice clipped and to the point. "Jackie."

Matt straightened and backed up a step in response to Charles' tone.

"Major James."

Realisation seemed to hit Matt hard, as his eyes moved from Molly, to the uniform shirt she was wearing with the name James on the shoulder to the officer with the same surname as the best friend of his now squirming girlfriend. He pinned Jackie with an accusing look that promised reprisals later before looking back at Molly.

Her large green eyes looked up at him, and for the first time he noticed the black run of mascara under her eyes and still wet trail of tears on her cheeks before her turned back to Charles, his stance suddenly taller and much straighter.

Jackie stepped forward, placing herself in front of Matt before his protective instinct had a chance to get him into trouble.

"We were on a night out for Matt's birthday, Sir, and managed to lose Molly on the way back to the hotel." Jackie said quickly.

"That was a tad careless of someone." Charles replied dryly, eyes swinging toward Matt.

"Emm, yes…Sir." Jackie replied, recognising that this conversation had the potential to head south rapidly. "Thank you for looking after Molly. We'll just grab a taxi and head back shall we?"

"Where are you staying?"

"The Guildford Lodge, on the Farnham Road. I had a Groupon." Jackie replied, rattled into blabbering by his clipped tone. "Not that that's relevant…at all…Sir."

"Indeed." Charles replied, turning back to the car and kneeling down towards Molly again. "It's late, Molly's cold. Get in the car, I'll drive you."

"Perhaps we'd be better in a taxi." Matt said.

"That wasn't a request, Geddings." Charles replied with his back still rudely presented towards his subordinate. "Molly, you need to swing your legs around."

"I really think, Sir–" Matt argued.

"It's okay, Matt. Just get in the car. I'm tired and I want to get back. Please."

"Molly–"

"Get in the car, Geddings, or walk." Charles snapped looking over his shoulder at Matt. The tension between them palpable until Molly touched Charles' face with her hand gently, drawing his attention back to her trying to calming him and the situation down.

"I'm cold, I just want to get back." she said quietly, willing to show her vulnerability if it would take the heat out of things.

Jackie stepped in similarly with a hand against Matt's back. "Come on. Get in."

Charles leaned in, drawing the seat belt across Molly and clipping it into the holder before walking around to the driver's seat.

The engine started and he pulled away smoothly, but the white knuckled grip he had on the steering wheel betrayed his outward projection of calm. He leaned towards Molly briefly to click on a switch, and warmth radiated from the seat beneath her provide instant relief to her chilled skin.

With a familiar questioning tilt of his head and raised eyebrows, he asked a silent question that she answered automatically.

"Better, thank you."

"Good." he said with a tight smile, that didn't quite reach his eyes. From the way his brows remained drawn together, creasing his forehead into t-shaped frown line, she knew he was upset.

The drive to the hotel was mercifully short given the tight silence in the car. Charles swung the car into a parking space close to the door and was around by the passenger door before Molly had a chance to drop her sock clad feet onto the wet tarmac.

"Come on." he said, arms out and Molly slid across the seat as he swung her up into his arm again and carried through the hotel wide stone porch and into the light of the downstairs reception with Matt and Jackie following.

Turning to Matt, Jackie pressed their room key card into his hand with a pointed look in the direction of the lift. Matt's expression wasn't exactly warm as he looked over to where Molly was standing beside Charles.

"Matts just going to head upstairs, Molly." Jackie said

When I didn't look as though he was going to move under his own steam. Jackie gave him a subtle nudge with her hand and sighed with relief when he turned and headed for the stairs.

"I'll just go and sort out a key-card for you, Mols." Jackie said, indicated the reception desk behind which the Night Receptionist was all wide eyed and curious at the sight of Charles in full uniform while trying to hide that she was agog with curiosity by re-arranging leaflets on the desk in front of her industriously.

"You'll be alright?" Charles asked carefully

"Yes," Molly said quietly, unsure of what else to say because what the hell could she say to him from the middle of the mess she'd made.

"This isn't over, Molly."

"It is."

"Why?"

"Because it has to be."

Charles dropped a kiss onto her forehead which lingered and, God help her, she caught herself leaning into the contact helplessly.

His caught her hand in his and placed a piece of lined paper on her palm.

Molly's eyes dropped to the words written shakily in her handwriting: 'I'm sorry I can't' and tears welled in her eyes again.

Charles raised her face to look at him again with a gentle finger under her chin.

"That's not an answer I'm willing to accept." he said simply before turning and leaving. As the electric door closed on his retreating figure, Molly felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room.

Jackie approached her slowly. "What is it about you and people giving you pieces of paper?"

Molly shook her head silently.

"Too soon for humour?"

"Yeah, something like that. Try me again tomorrow. All I've got left in me tonight is a shower and my pit."

"Come on then, let's get you sorted out." Jackie said, putting an arm around Molly waist and squeezing affectionately.

Matt was waiting for them when they came out of the lift, his expression full of questions.

Jackie pressed one of the replacement key cards into Molly's hand. "Take that, I'll be there in a minute."

Taking Matt's outstretched hand, she pulled him into their room then turned gratefully into his arms as he laid his head against her hair.

"Is she okay?" Matt asked.

"Not really, but she will be. You know Molly."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not tonight. Tomorrow? I promise."

"Are you going to stay with her?"

"Yeah. I think it's best. Will you be okay?"

"I can think of several things I'm not okay with about tonight but they can wait. I'm completely okay with that. Give her a hug from me."

Jackie smiled up into his hazel brown eyes reminding herself yet again just how lucky she was to have fallen in love with Matthew Geddings.

"Beneath that gruff, handsome, Northern exterior lurks a bit of a softy really."

"Maybe, but don't let that get out. My reputation would never recover if the recruits ever found out."

"My lips are sealed." Jackie said with a grin before reaching up to kiss him goodnight.

 **ooOOoo**

Molly showered quickly. Teeth brushed, she finished by running a hair brush through her wet hair before plaiting it roughly and re-dressing in his uniform shirt. The illogicalness of washing the smell of him off her skin only to replace it with an item of his clothing wasn't something she let her self linger on as she left the room.

Jackie was sitting cross-legged on one of the two doubles beds dressed for bed when Molly returned from the bathroom. If she thought Molly be dressed for bed in her estranged husband's uniform shirt and socks was in anyway strange, her expression gave nothing away.

"I'm going to stay with you, okay?"

"Thanks, Jacs. I'll apologise to Matt in the morning. Not much of ending to his birthday, was it." Molly said climbing under the duvet as Jackie climbed under the covers of the neighbouring bed.

"He only cares that you're okay. Said to give you a hug."

"Soft sod."

"I know."

Molly clicked the light off and the darkness and silence that followed was almost a relief. The quiet was like the comfort of a heavy blanket, with the only sound in the room being the distant rumble of traffic on the A31 and Jackie's soft breathing.

Despite that, sleep for Molly took a long time to come.


	9. Chapter 9

**Author Note**

 _Many thanks for the reviews._

 **Mood music**

 _Things We Lost In The Fire – Bastille, Waiting Room – Grace Carter, Come Out And Play – Billie Eilish, Grace – Rag 'n' Bone Man._

 **Chapter Nine**

* * *

 _Denial is the way people handle what they cannot handle._ _ **― Shannon L. Alder**_

* * *

Knowing Matt's morning habits Molly planned on catching up with him before he went for a run. Tiptoeing out of the room early dressed in running gear, she left Jackie sprawled on her stomach storing gently into her pillow. He didn't disappoint, turning up on schedule as she waited for him at the bottom of the stairs in the hotel reception with two bottles of water and an apologetic expression.

"Jacs still out of it?"

"Like a baby. A big snoring baby."

"Sounds about right. You coming with me then?"

"I think we have some stuff to talk about." Molly said, studying her feet.

"Stop looking so flaming guilty, Pinocchio number two." Matt said. "Run first, 'fessing up later, I think. Come on then before that nose of yours remembers to start growing and you trip over it."

Molly smiled relieved because, in his normal no-nonsense way, Matt had already forgiven and forgotten being dragged into last night's drama.

 **ooOOoo**

Matt took them on a route that headed into the town then out towards the suburbs, looping back via the canal which ran through Guildford town centre. Slowing to a walk as they approached Millmead Lock, they stopped to talk on a picnic table near the back of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre.

Molly shared the whole sorry story. His PTSD, her insecurities. The car accident, the break up, and finally Georgie. As close as they were, she shared more detail than she ever had before. Details that only Jackie knew.

"The way you left your husband was brutal. I'm not saying he didn't deserve it but you never gave him a way to speak to you. To make amends."

"We were amazing at the start. He was my rock and the first person I ever loved who I knew I could trust with every part of me, the good and the bad. Then he wasn't that person anymore. When I left, I thought there nothing left to say."

Matt watched Molly carefully. She was sitting, like him, on the picnic table top but while he was leaning back stretched out and relaxed, Molly had her legs drawn into her chest protectively. Chin propped on the knees, she was staring off into the middle distance and, to Matt, looked far younger than her twenty-four years. More like the raw-recruit he'd met at her basic training except her former youthful sass and courage had been knocked out of her by life.

"What about what he needed?"

"I don't understand?"

"You said he was ill."

"He was."

"So, what about his vulnerabilities, weaknesses? Wasn't he allowed to be flawed, vulnerable, ill?"

"That's not fair, I tried bloody hard to sort us out before I left."

"I know, I know… I'm not saying you didn't, but I also don't think anything is ever fair when a marriage starts to fail."

Matt stood, and Molly followed as they started the short walk a back to the hotel.

"You can thank him and her for that. The failing."

"PTSD is a bastard, it breaks people and relationships. But blame? Yeah, maybe, the emotional over stepping certainly, but the physical side of things. That happened after you'd finished, or have I got the timing wrong?"

"No, you're right about that."

"From the way you explained it, she was a good friend once upon a time."

"She was when she and Elvis were still dating. After they broke up, the friendship kind of drifted away. It had to, I suppose, because I was close to Elvis."

"Did you ever think she'd come in between you?"

"Of course not, she was a solid to me as Charles, until…"

"Her fiancé died in front of her and she probably came down with PTSD as a result."

"She said as much when she tracked me down and started off this avalanche of shit. Not that I didn't contribute massively by going to his house."

"Mols you're missing the point, totally as usually."

"Fine, Yoda. In part your wisdom why don't you."

"Life has taught you that you need to protect yourself. I'm not criticising that, but it's also made you hard. Fail and no going back, trust gone. You want my opinion?"

She nodded.

"I'm not saying you could or should have stayed around in the aftermath, I'm just saying there might have been different ways to take things."

"At the time I needed everything to stop. See him, talking to him knowing what had happened between them was too much. I wasn't strong enough. Leaving and closing the door or everything seemed like the only way to survive. He'd moved on to Georgie, I never imagined he'd need or want a way back."

"Isn't that what loving someone is about being open to them, even their weaknesses and fears and failures."

"It was never about a lack of love between us and in the end neither of us were open to each. We just didn't work when things went off the rails. _I_ didn't cope when he went off the rails. Doesn't matter now though, does it?"

The electric doors of the hotel opened with a quiet swoosh as they walked through and up the stairs to the first-floor bedrooms.

"It seemed to matter to him quite a lot last night. That's one thing I don't get. Just why does he have the impression that we're an item?"

"I bolted yesterday without my bag or phone. I guess he checked it. The picture on the front screen is of you, me and Jacs hugging. He must have seen it and jumped to conclusions." Molly said, pressing the key card into her room door. "I'm sorry you got dragged into it with you both working at Pirbright."

"It's a big base." Matt shrugged. "I don't see him much on a day to day basis."

"Really?"

"He's the Colonel Adjutant. So, daily no. Monthly, yes."

"Fuck, Matt, I'm so sorry. The last thing you need is beef with your CO."

"Well, he more like my CO's CO, so it's not completely a burn situation."

"Still talking about Molly's husband?" Jackie asked with a smile as she spread her hands open over plates of food on the bed in front of her like a game show hostess demonstrating the top prize. "Your timing's good, I just got back from collecting some breakfast. Thought it would be quicker."

"Ex-husband," Molly corrected mulishly.

"No, he's your current husband and you have the paperwork if not the rings to prove it."

Molly pulled a face at Jackie who pulled one back.

"Stop pouting and eat." Jackie said, holding out a plate to Molly containing a croissant and some fruit.

Sitting on the side of her bed, Molly ripped a corner off the pastry and put it in her mouth.

"You're sure you're okay? I know he's my CO but I could arrange to let down his tyres or something." Matt said, demolishing a Danish Pastry before starting on a second.

"I appreciate the sentiment but no thank you. Anyway, the coffee machine in his office would be the best target if I wanted to hit him where it hurts."

"Oh my god, yes. The machine he used to take on tour. The Rosabaya. Only you two could turn having a shopping list written on your arm into a romantic gesture."

Molly's physical flinch at the memory was subtle, but there none the less and caused Matt to throw a warning look over his shoulder towards his much loved by sometimes brutally blunt girlfriend.

"They don't sell Rosabaya anymore. I thought that was kind of ironic when Nespresso where kind enough email me about it. I hope he stock piled the stuff. He was right grumpy arse without it in the morning if we ran out."

"On that cheerful thought, you two need to eat up. We need to checkout. Molly is on shift this afternoon and I've got to have a kip before nightshift, so we need to get a move on I'm afraid.

 **ooOOoo**

Molly had barely unlocked the front door and stepped through into the living room before Jackie appeared. Popping up like a magician assistant from lying flat out on the sofa.

"Jesus, Jacs. You gave me a fright. Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Sorry. I was, I nodded off down here after a very nice Lance Corporal from Pirbright turned up in a duty car and delivered those for you with Major James' compliments."

Jackie nodded towards a large bunch of flowers, box and Molly's handbag and shoes from Matts night out.

"After I chewed him out for waking me up and explained you were working, he stayed for a cuppa and a catch up. Brains says hi by the way."

"He's working with him?"

"Well deduced, Miss Marple. For a couple of months, apparently. Brains also left his mobile number, you know, in case you'd lost it." Jackie pinned Molly with a frown. "Did your former Section members not survive your social media purge?"

"I couldn't face Brains, or the rest of them, after he told me about him and Georgie. Their pity would have about finished me off."

"You know they wouldn't have been like that."

"At the time, I couldn't see passed my own embarrassment. I regret it now."

"Well aren't you lucky; here's your second chance to reconnect with them."

Jackie pulled out her mobile and tapped on the screen until Molly's own phone pinged.

"Thanks, Jacs."

"There you go, make sure you use it, otherwise I will be forced to arrange a reunion weekend and you know how rowdy those get."

Molly approached the flowers reluctantly, taking the card with the same sort of slow hesitance that a bomb disposal personnel would approach an IED. Jackie sat up straighter, watching the evident tension in Molly with worried eyes as she slipped the cream coloured card out of the envelope and read the message.

 _"This was the first promise between us that I broke. I'm fixing that now. Love C."_

Molly exhaled. Letting go of a breath that she hadn't be conscientious she was holding.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"What's in the box do you think?"

"A vase." Molly replied without hesitation.

"How can you tell without opening it?"

The words on his note run through Molly's mind bringing with them reminders of happier times now coloured with painful regrets.

It had been his gift to Molly after she'd finally agreed to them moving in together. He'd called it a present for the house, but it had been so much more to both of them. A cut glass crystal vase that came with a promise. That he would put flowers in it for her at the end of every week, whether he was home or on tour. More than just a mushy gesture, it was his commitment to her that he would be reliable when others in her life had failed on promises.

Charles had known she had trust issues from very start of their relationship because of her complicated family life and emotionally messy dating history. Letting herself trust and believe that it could be safe to rely on somebody else had not come easily to Molly She'd made him work for that trust; the first two weeks of communication silence on her second tour in Afghanistan after Smurf's funeral, refusing to live together, turning down his first proposal, had all be unconscious tested he had had to navigate.

Regarding the promise the vase represented, he'd been as good as his word, returning faithfully with flowers each weekend when at home, and arranging a delivery for when he was on tour.

Molly had been on tour in Sierra Leone when she had taken the scary step to return his gesture while she was away and he was at home. His delighted reaction on a Skype call after her first arranged delivery had been everything. It had been a turning point between them, her unspoken but public gesture of surrendering her defensive walls. She'd accept his second proposal on Christmas day later than year without hesitation.

He never faltered on his promises for three years until Elvis died. After that the vase remained empty. On the day she left the house and posted her keys through the locked door at her back, she'd left the vase behind because it hadn't felt like it was hers to take anymore.

"How can you know that without opening it?" Jackie asked, snapping Molly out of her thoughts so sharply that she physically startled.

She handed the card to Jackie wordlessly and watched as her friend pulled a face, lips rounding into a silent "oh" of surprise.

"It's _that_ vase."

Molly ripped the box open roughly and removed the heavy piece of glass from the paper wrapping to place it onto the table where Jackie had left the parcel. She stuffed the wrappings back inside of the box with a heavy sigh, staring at the empty vase with expression which was an unusual mixed of melancholy and irritation.

"I need to grab a shower." she said suddenly, stepping away from the table to leave the room. "Before I pick up Sam."

"What do want me to do with these?" Jackie asked. "Bin them? Burn them? Send them back in dramatically chopped pieces bunny-boiler style?"

"Stick some water in the vase, shove the flowers in them. What else?"

"Really?"

"Yes really. He can send a hold bleedin' garden if he likes. It means nothing. Never did like flowers anyway." Molly replied dismissively as she walked towards the stairs, scooping up her returned handbag and shoes en-route.

"And that's it?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"You know what they say about denial being a bloody big, deep river, Molls?"

"No, no idea what you're on about, you nut-bar."

"Just suggesting you get your life-jacket looked out ready. That's all I'm saying." Jackie called out to Molly's retreating back as she started to climb the stairs.

"Don't need a life-jacket, Jacs. I can swim just fine."

"You might want to remember which Major taught you to swim before you start that game, lady."

"Jac, I love you but fuck off, okay? I've gotta run otherwise I'll be late."

A sideways observation about Molly and running had rather been the point Jackie was trying to make and Molly was very deliberately managing to miss. Jackie was clear in her own mind that avoidance was Molly's new mission, but she was also confident that search and capture was likely to Major James' overall battle plan.

She'd seen the look on his face when he walked away from Molly in the hotel reception. Seen what it had cost him to go. There was no way that a man who loved that much was going to be able to stay away forever.


	10. Chapter 10

**Mood music**

 _Grip – Seeb & Bastille, Dare You To Move – Switchfoot, Broken–Patrick Watson, Start a War – Clergy & BELLSAINT, Many of Horror – Biffy Clyro_

 **Chapter Ten**

* * *

 _Maybe we needed to break a little, so we could put ourselves back together more beautifully than before._ _ **― Leah Raeder**_

* * *

 **"** Molly! Molly, over here! Molly! Here!" Sam's over excited voice bellowed from the trampoline as he punctuated each shout of her name with a progressively larger bounce until he ended with a flip, landing on his back giggling loudly.

"I'm going to be over on the sofa with your Mum. Okay, mate? You've cream crackered me out!" Molly called over her shoulder as Sam climbed back up, joining a small queue of similarly aged shrieking kids waiting for a turn on a different trampoline.

Flopping down onto the sofa, Molly reached for her cup of tea with a groan.

"Jesus, give me a 10K tab in full kit over this. I thought I was fit. He's knackered me out and is still fresh as a daisy."

Rebecca grinned over the mug of her decaf coffee. "School holidays and rubbish weather. He's been climbing the walls all week. Look, thanks for this. He needed to burn off some energy. You've been a life saver."

"No problem. It's not like you and the bump could take part." Molly said, nodding to Rebecca's pregnancy bump.

"Best case ending of that sort of activity would be wet knickers." Molly snorted with laughter as Rebecca smoothed her hand over her stomach with a smile, the winced. "Or a public delivery. Neither are desirable."

"Kicking?"

"Yes, I think he wants to join in with his big brother."

"Not long now."

"Eight weeks. Couldn't happen soon enough, I'm the size of the side of house already."

"Quit it. There's no extra weight on you that isn't baby. You'll be back to being stick-insect thin straight after you've delivered, you jammy cow."

Rebecca laughed. "I think that's one of the reasons why I ended up liking you. They way you manage to turn an insult into a compliment while maintaining a completely straight face."

"This isn't where I thought we'd end up five years ago after meeting in that hospital room. You took one look at me had me labelled and condemn." Molly replied with a grin. "I'm surprised I wasn't asked to strip and parade around Birmingham ringin' a bell yellin' 'Unclean! Unclean!'"

"Nice Game of Thrones reference." Rebecca said with a cheeky tip of her head.

"I thought so." Molly let her eyes drift around the people setting around various couches and tables in the newly opened trampoline park in a very well healed corner of Twickenham. "I bet most of the posh birds in this place think I'm your nanny."

Rebecca watched Molly with a wicked glint in her eyes, and stood up, holding her drink out as though about to make a toast. "I can make an announcement if you like."

Molly caught her by the edge of her long cardigan and tugged. "Sit down you, daft cow. They'll think you've been on the gin instead of decaf and haul you off."

"As if you didn't label me the same way. I'm thinking stuck up bitch with pole shoved up her arse probably about covered it? Am I right?"

"Let's just say you ticked all my boxes for the characteristics of a Rupert-wife, including the lemon-lipped expression."

"I saw you standing there and thought, here it comes, his super early midlife crisis waiting to happen. Then I saw the way he looked at you and realised how wrong I was. He loved you. I'm not going to lie, I was jealous at the time."

"Becs."

"Don't you _Becs_ me. You brought up this topic of conversation. Our marriage should never have happened. If I'd not been so terrified of being a single mother and he'd not been so hard-wired to do that right bloody thing in all circumstances, regardless of common-sense, it would never have happened.

"We were too two Type-A, obnoxiously competitive personality types thrown together, and it was emotional guerrilla warfare from the start. We worked better as long-distance fuckbuddies, if you want the brutal truth. It should have fizzled out naturally as a university romance, not been glued together with a marriage certificate. We parent better apart. Sam's happy, that's all that matters. It's all ancient history now, thank fuck."

"Don't pull you're punches."

"Call a spade a spade, and a bitch a bitch, wasn't that what you said when you called me on my behaviour that Christmas?"

"I wasn't subtle, but it was either me as the go-between or his mother and she was threatening to come with weapons. Charles was so upset, I had to do something." Molly said, spreading her hands in an apologetic sort of gesture, Rebecca just laughed in response.

"I remember. I deserved it though, didn't I? I was too buried in my own jealous bullshit to realise I was getting in the way of Sam and his Dad, and you and Sam. I was just so worried I'd be replaced.

"You fitted into his family and life so quickly in a way that I never did. His parents thought the sun shone out of your backside, Sam adored you from day one. You were the fun new girlfriend with the tribe of little brothers for him to play with. What did I have to offer? Knackered Ph.D. Student mother with too many plates in the air to remember how to be fun mum most of the time."

"I lost my temper. Said too much, then made you cry. I was mortified."

"I'd been on the edge of tears all day. Not enough sleep, worn thin, worried about my thesis. I was primed to blow."

"Best ugly crying fit I ever saw. I was terrified I'd broken you."

"You gave good hugs. I needed somebody to see I was struggling. I told you, obnoxious Type-A personality type. Couldn't even admit to myself I was drowning."

"You made rather good hot chocolate after. Posh Green & Blacks stuff, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but it also had a boat load of Baileys thrown in." Rebecca stroked her stomach again. "Probably as well you didn't have a driving license back then. God, I miss alcohol, but I still can't stand the smell since the morning sickness."

"All is well that ends well, Dr Rebecca Hammond. Three years on from becoming a University Lecturer and you'll soon be swapping it all for nappies again."

"It'll be fine. It's not like Charles was around for night feeds and dirty nappies. Julian is taking a couple of months of paternity leave, so I'll have help, once he's trained up, it will all be good. I was wondering if I'll find it weird having help, to be honest."

"Just park you Type A, inner bossy bitch and let him get stuck in and you'll be fine. You know I'll help when I can. You just need to ask."

"Thanks for the offer. I will take you up on that."

Rebecca took a small sip of her drink before casually asking, "How's it been since the visit from the floozy."

"Floozy? Seriously. You make her sound like a character from one of the bodice-ripper novels that my Nan used to buy from the second-hand book seller in Camden Market. On the subject of books, what's the latest offering from the book club? Let me tell you, if it's anything along the lines of monumental pile of crap that was _'Eat Pray Love'_ , then I'm calling a day on this particular bonding activity."

"Do not disrespect my book club. It helped get you through A Level English, didn't it?"

"Yes, it you, and hours of online tutoring from a certain Afghani English Professor. ' _Eat Pray Love'_ was after the exams, it doesn't count."

Rebecca reached down to grab her handbag, then flopped back into the sofa with an annoyed huff.

"For god sake, it's getting to the point I can't even see my ankles anymore never mind reach the floor."

"Then stop being a muppet, and ask for help." Molly replied, placing the brown leather Mulberry satchel beside her on the sofa.

Rebecca pulled out a copy of _All The Light We Cannot See_ and passed it to Molly. "Has soldiers in it, should be right up your street."

Molly rolled her eyes at Rebecca's teasing grin.

"Thanks. I trying getting a start on it during my break next I'm in work."

"Don't think I didn't notice you changing the subject."

Molly sighed heavily. "What is there to say. I closed a door on him, she turned up unannounced and tried to smash it open again."

"And?"

"And what?" Rebecca pulled a frustrated face and Molly knew straight away she'd been talking to Jackie.

"Right, like that is it?"

"I have no idea what you mean." Molly made snorting noise, indignantly amused at Jackie's interference. "Like you two haven't been on the phone clacking like old biddies."

"We can hardly do it over cocktails anymore now, can we? It was Facetime actually, and she's worried about you. She said your nightmares are back and getting worse. That you haven't arrange to go back to your counsellor. Why would you ignore this?"

"Look, do you want another coffee?"

"Stop changing the subject, this is serious."

"Okay, Boss-mum. Calm down. I'm not trying to duck the subject. I just think we might need fresh drinks."

"Now I'm intrigued. Yes, I would like another coffee flavoured decaf travesty of an imitation of real coffee, thank you. Vanilla flavour because sugar is about the only fun I'm allowed to have with food anymore. Fuck, I hate being pregnant."

Molly's giggles had everything to do with how the word _fuck_ sounded twice as filthy as normally when spoken using Rebecca's posh home counties accent.

"Molly! Molly!" Sam shouted from behind the netting of the trampoline enclosure. "We're going to have a game of dodge ball, come on!"

"Her master's voice. I'm gonna see to him, then I'll be back with the drinks."

"Don't take too long. I'm rather reverting to a toddler these days. I have zero attention span, and need to nap frequently. I might nod off before you get back."

ooOOoo

Molly recounted the tale to Rebecca giving the broad strokes of their meeting at his house up to the last conversation in the hotel while stepping around their carnal encounter. Rebecca seemed most interest in their parting words.

"That man is the definition of stubborn as a mule. You should know this, you were married long enough. He stuck out marriage with me two years longer than I wanted to because his inner Dudley Do-right wouldn't let it go."

"Maybe that's what he's doing again?"

"No. Absolutely not. I knew right from the start things with you were different. He offered to resign his commission and leave the Army for you. He expected me to mould my life round his, right from the start he wanted to mould his around you."

"It still went to shit, though."

"The thing with Floozy threw me. I couldn't get my head around him leaving you to sleep with a subordinate on tour. Go against Army regs? So not Dudley enough of him."

"We got together on tour. Well almost."

"The Afghanistan kiss in a hovel? That was _very_ Charles, possessive and stubborn to a fault. Your friend rocks up and announces his intentions to propose to you. Of course, Charles was going to show his hand and secure you but he pulled it off enough under the radar to keep you both safe within the rules.

"The thing with Floozy was reckless. Not Charles type behaviour at all." Rebecca said, staring off into the middle distance, deep in thought as she sipped her latte.

"I slept with him." Molly said in a guilty rush then jumped to her feet to avoid the spray of coffee that Rebecca coughed up. "Hey!"

Rebecca pinned Molly with an accusing stare as she wipe coffee from her mouth. "You might want to lead with that news before you give me a boiling hot beverage, Molly. To be clear on our points of reference, you mean you had sex with him, not just fell asleep, yes?"

It occurred to Molly that they had technically done both, but this subject was awkward enough without sharing additional unnecessary details.

"Yes."

"Okay, good to be clear. Jesus, this maternity tent of a top is going to look more stylish for added coffee stains."

After several minutes of watching Rebecca industriously wiping down her top with a napkin, Molly couldn't wait any longer.

"That's it? I tell you I slept with my ex-husband and all you have to say is fashion feedback on maternity wear?"

"Not to be too much of a pedantic bitch, and only because I think it's relevant, he's your current, not ex-husband. Ex would require you to send divorce papers, which I think we both know you, in glowingly obvious terms, haven't done."

"Yet." Rebecca rolled her large blue eyes at Molly's protest.

"Say it often enough, and even I might start to believe you, Molly. "Getting back to the point in hand, you two always had a certain... chemistry. You haven't seen or spoken to each other in a year thanks to the Great-Wall-of-Molly. Why would you think I'd be surprised if things got a bit heated?"

"It wasn't like a planned." Molly said with a stubborn tone to her voice.

"I not sure people tend to plan these sort so things in your circumstances, no is it?" "It's a simple point of fact that you ended things between you. If you'd not sworn everyone to communication silence on the subject of Charles on pain of death or ex-communication from the world of Molly James, I might have brought it up before, but he came looking for you after you moved out of the house. More than once. You know he still wears his wedding ring, or where you too busy with _other_ activities to notice?"

"Have you discussed me with him? You know…after…"

"Charles only manages to discuss subjects that relate directly to Sam and the words hello and goodbye with me without looking constipated, even now. He's always been intensely private about things."

"So, that's a no then."

"You told me to tell him nothing. I kept my promise. It's about time one of you tried to move thing s forward between you."

"Yeah, because sex clarified everything beautifully, didn't it. I've made such a mess of this."

"You love him, he loves you, but fucked up. I'm not sure where you two go beyond that, but I do know talking about it instead of running away from it is probably a good place to start."

"It was fine before, settled, until Georgie decided to turn up and throw a grenade into things."

"I think you're confusing coping with settled. And, not that I want to defend, Floozy, but from what Jackie said, she actually made some good points."

Molly's expression might have been her trying for a scowl but it sorted came out as more of an anxious frown. Rebecca's expression and tone soften, because ultimately what she looked very scared.

"You remember the day I turned up on your door step after you get back from Turkey with Sam in the car?"

"Yes. You said there was no way you were going to let Sam lose his Step Mum because Charles had been a tosser and thrown away another marriage."

"I think I actually used the word wanker, but that's beside the point. Whatever happens with you two, you're not going to lose Sammy or the life you've built. You need to speak to him at some point, whatever comes of it. Either end it or start over again, you're in between two sides of nothing at the moment, both of you."

"I should never have gone to his house."

"You did what you felt you needed to do at the time. Sex happened. Don't beat yourself up about it. Seems to me going to the house was you moving forward, you've be stuck static for far too long."

"I went there so I could see him living his life, like I'm trying to live mine and to be able to let it go finally. Look how well that worked out."

"As emotionally stunted and up his own arse as Charles can be, he isn't going to let this alone now."

"And he says such nice things about you."

"No, he doesn't."

"Fair point."

"You closed a door on both of you when you left making it very clear in actions if not words that he wasn't to come anywhere near you. I think sex opens it again."

"There is no us."

"You've muddied the waters and one thing I do remember about Charles is he can be bloody tenacious when he wants something. The original dog with a bone."

"I don't know what to fucking think, Becs. Georgie pops up again with all thoughts keep plaguing me. I was doing okay before that, now I'm blood scared of what happens next, if I'm honest."

"Good scared, or bad scared?" "Just scared, scared."

"I'm not joking, Molly, you need to make an appointment with Dr Daddy-issues."

"For fuck sake, you and Jackie have been speaking _way_ too much to each other recently if you've starting using her nicknames."

"That doesn't mean she isn't right about you needing that appointment. You've a lot to process. Maybe that's where you start getting some clarity."

"Fine. I'll think on it."

"Don't think, do. Look. You've never been a coward. Don't start now. You came back from Afghanistan anxious of travelling in cars. What did you do? Learn to bloody drive even though each lesson left you a trembling wreck for hours afterwards. I was there in the bloody car with you. Someone who has the raw courage, or pig stubborn, bloody mindedness to face that sort of fear head on, can face this too."

"Okay, if it will get you both off my back."

"Talk to Charles, or talk to Dr Daddy-issues."

"Talk to Dr Sinclair."

"Fine, but I'm warning you. If the mountain won't come to Charles James, he will track you down eventually. I'd suggest you beat him to it first."

"I'll think about okay, you stubborn mare."

"Takes one to know one, you cockney bint." Rebecca said affectionately "That's all I'll say. I do have once question."

"Only one?"

"Hardie, har-har." Molly smiled around a mouthful of her almost forgotten about tea.

"How was it?" And then it was Molly's turn to choke on her drink.

"Rebecca!"

"What? I'm the size of a blimp, Jules had decided that sex now might hurt the baby, not that we don't get up to other stuff, but it's just not the same. With the hormones and more… well, I'm just more interested in it. From memory, Charles was no slouch in the bedroom department."

"Enough, enough before my eyes start to bleed with that mental image. There is a reason that the ex-wife and the next wife being close is so weird, and it's subjects like this that make our friendship particularly creepy."

Rebecca threw her head back and laughed, a wonderfully rich, dirty laugh that had Molly joining in despite herself.

"Fine, spoil my fun. I think it's about time we left anyway, before well exercise turns into over tired and hungry for Mr Samuel James. You have a long drive back to Bath to drop him off with his Grandparents."

"This one's on me, I'll go pay for the drinks and get some snacks for the ca." Molly rustled around in her handbag for her purse, growing frustrated when she could find it near the top where she normal kept it. "Stupid bag, I need to buy something smaller and stop carting around so much shit."

"Just tip it out." Rebecca suggested, clearing a space on the table in front of them. Molly up ended the bag and a familiar key ring was the first thing to fall out with a heavy _clunk_.

"What the hell."

"It's keys, what of it?" Rebecca asked, confused by Molly's shocked expression as she picked them up and examined the one familiar and two unfamiliar keys attached to the metal ring and heavy medallion embossed with an elaborate swirling letters that made up her initials–MLJ.

"Keys that I left behind a year ago."

"Wait, didn't you say you left the bag behind at his house?"

"Yeah, but he sent someone over with it today to the house, which was good news because I left my purse and phone behind as well."

Rebecca's face looked contemplative for a minute.

"Wait, what am I missing?"

"Give me your phone for a minute."

"Why?"

"Just do it, I'm working on a hunch. You might want to check the rest of your bag, too."

"For what?"

"A statement of intent."

Molly handed over the iPhone, unlocking the screen for Rebecca and the home screen loaded with a picture of her standing in between Matt and Jackie being cuddled appeared then disappeared to a as Rebecca opened Siri.

Molly opened her purse and started checked through the contents as Rebecca asked the phone, "Siri, who is my husband?"

The phone replied chirpily, "Here's the contact details for Charles James."

"That can't be in there. I delete all his contact details last year." Molly said agitatedly. "Wait, what the hell."

Two familiar cards that shouldn't have been present were tugged out of the purse and laid on the table top. The credit and debit cards for their joint accounts that she'd left behind with paperwork to close the accounts. Both their names together in embossed writing on the cards seemed to mock Molly as she stared at them.

"Well Molly James. I think we can call that a declaration of a battle to follow, don't you?"


	11. Chapter 11

**Mood music**

 _You Say – Lauren Daigle, The Few Things – Charlotte Lawrence & J.P. Saxe, What's Good – Fenne Lily, Scared to Be Lonely (Acoustic Version) – Martin Garrix & Dua Lipa, I Was Made For Loving You – Madilyn Bailey, Can't Stop – Madilyn Bailey, Someone You Loved – Lewis Calpaldi_

 **Chapter Eleven**

* * *

 _When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire in hope of forgetting that the house is burning. But not facing a fire doesn't put it out. Silence about a thing just magnifies it. It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant..._ _ **― Tennessee Williams**_

* * *

Molly was unsure whether she was feeling a sense of relief or reluctance as she parked her car around the corner from Dr Sinclair's–a.k.a. Dr Daddy-issues– office. If she was being honest with herself, she would admit it was a mix of both. Submitting to counselling had never come easily to Molly, and it had been a relief when their move to Birmingham had present a sensible excuse to stop. New start, new Molly, had been her mantra. Of course, it had been a bit of an emotional smoke screen; her attempt at wishing something into being.

Ending the counselling had been Molly telling herself that she was fixed, the same way she had tried to tell herself that the memories of them together would fade, blur and soften like old fashioned sepia toned photos, so she could say they were behind her and in the past. They hadn't, of course, and instead remaining sharp and clear. With Georgie's recent input they were like cracked edge on a sheet of glass–they hurt when touched.

Jackie's lecture about denial being a big river had made an impact on Molly, even though she'd never admitted it to Jackie on the grounds that she would never hear the end of it. In fact, Jackie and Rebecca's combined, but very different voices, had brought her here today. Back to a place she'd hoped she never see again but very much needed to be regardless of reluctance or nerves. Avoiding things had worked for a year but she'd brought Charles back into her own life by turning up at his house. The rules and situation had changed; she needed to change with them.

The office with the big squashy chair was the same. Molly couldn't be sure, but the fish in the tank might have been different. Didn't matter, though, they still gave her the willies with the way they swam around and around in fruitless circles with their weird glassy eyes staring and staring.

Dr Sinclair greeted Molly pleasantly: professionally polite smile, generic opening question. It was all so familiar.

"How have you been since our last meeting, Molly?"

Molly sat in the chair and told herself she was only going to talk about the recurring nightmares. She'd forgotten about the power of Elizabeth Sinclair's careful and patient 'I'm listening' expression and her way of leaving a silence to hang just long enough to make Molly rush to fill it, sending herself down conversation paths she preferred to dodge.

It had all come out. Georgie, the note, and the nightmares. Charles being suddenly back in her life. Issue after issue tumbling from her mouth in an avalanche of words as Molly confessed to her messed up personal life.

Consulting the hand-written notes in front of her, Elizabeth looked up and observed Molly nervously fidgeting with the hem of her jumper.

"When we last met you were feeling positive about a fresh start and closing the door, so to speak, on your relationship. You talked about moving forwards, perhaps progressing with the formalities of divorce proceedings."

That conversation had happened. Molly had a very clear memory of leaving the office sure of her future path–speaking to a lawyer, moving things forward. None of it happened. Initially she told herself life was just getting in the way. To be fair she had been busy: house move, University work and ward work, returning to duties during the holidays. Life got busy and she dodged the subject willingly. Denial, denial, denial again.

"I told myself I was ready, but when it came to it, I couldn't do it. I want to move on but it's me that's struggling to take that step."

"Do you have any ideas why you're struggling, to use your word, to progress things?"

"No, I wish I did. We both agreed to call an end to things. Then I found out he'd slept with her almost straight after… and it hurt. Leaving and starting again seemed like the only thing to do."

Molly was trying to be detached and unemotional about it all. Enough time had passed that she felt she should be over it, but talking about it again was making her eyes and throat sting with unshed tears and she admitted to herself that she was anything but over it.

"I mean, I know I'd sort of gave him permission to move on but it still felt like _he'd_ rejected _me_ first with him texting her before all that _._ Like it wasn't a mutual decision because he'd not left me any choice. It was painful–knowing he replaced me so easily. I have plenty of reasons why I should want to finish things finally.

"Then Georgie comes back and tells me it wasn't the way I'd imagined it being between them. They never were a couple, just a one-time thing. Then Charles… and I'm not even sure I was in my right nut, going to his house, but suddenly he's back telling me he loves me, always did, and wants to try again… I don't know how to start processing that…"

"We talked before about how your husband's PTSD could have contributed to him having an emotional affair. PTSD can lead to suffers being unable to feel compassion, love, happy, sad or any other emotion. They struggle have an emotional closeness to family members and spouses. That lack of connection can lead to them to searching for a connection in any way possible to feel something with anyone and it usually doesn't end up with a connection to another person, except physically."

"I understand the reasons. Know the theories. Understood how it might have happened. Even back then I knew the thinking behind PTSD and its effects. But it wasn't just him was it? I told him stuff like he needed to get help or leave. I put those thoughts in his head, didn't I?"

"I don't think it's that simple. You didn't invite PTSD into your marriage and it wasn't just your husband suffering with it. You had to deal with your husband suffering it and the effects of that on you."

"I told him I was having doubts about us having a future together. That he needed to leave me."

"Why? Why did you need him to leave you?"

"All he seemed to have was this apathy towards everything. It smothered everything. Underneath that he was drowning'. Work was the only thing that seemed to matter. I loved him… I couldn't leave him when he was struggling like that but he was pulling me under with him. I was trying to survive. I needed something…anything to change."

"Hearing him say he wanted to try again, how did that make you feel?"

"Angry, defensive. Keeping him–them– at a distance felt … I don't know–safer– because I wouldn't have to hear about their happy ever after, if you see what I mean. Hearing that they didn't get together feels sort of worst. I'm not even sure I understand why but I'm doubt myself all over again. Questioning my decisions. The nightmares are just the icing on the bleedin' cake."

"That how you felt when you thought they were a couple. How do you feel now? On the surface of things, he's done what you asked him to do, got help, managed to heal himself. Those feelings that were missing are back."

"I don't' know. Frustrated maybe? It's like I'm back at the beginning again with no progress made. All the changes I made meant nothin' because nothin' moved on or got fixed. I've got stuck in the middle of it all and I've only just realised because I'm an idiot."

"You have a history of male role models in your life who have been unreliable or emotionally unsafe for you. I think you're being unfair on yourself for criticising the choices you made when you needed to makes choices at a time of emotional turmoil."

Molly just about managed to stop her instinctive eye roll at Elizabeth's poke at the issue of Dave Dawes and his fathering short falls. It was a subject that came up often in previous sessions and had been Jackie's reason for coining the nickname Dr Daddy-issues.

As ever, it got her back up, being labelled as poor Molly with the crap dad and all the baggage and limitations that entailed. She had worked really hard to get around and an out of all that. Molly Dawes from the bursting at the seams council house and her childish choices and dramatics was long gone and she resented any suggestions to the contrary.

"Maybe, but I'm also right, aren't I? I haven't been able to move forwards. I'm stuck. So, I'm doing something wrong somewhere."

"Let me rephrase the question. When things between you are your husband were good, how did the relationship make you feel."

Molly considered the question carefully. It was a complicate thing to quantify because when they'd been good together, the connection they had meant everything. Putting the depth and breadth of that into word was difficult.

"Safe?"

"And when it went wrong?"

"Like grief, like I'd lost something the same when somebody dies because I couldn't us back. I'm not sure I'm explaining it properly. Out of control maybe?"

That same patient smile had been able to give Molly to confidence to talk when words seemed like to hardest thing in the world to find was now, unfairly, making Molly irritated because it seemed to suggest that Elizabeth had answers that Molly was incapable of grasping.

"Let me clarify me terms. You're a Medic–"

"I'm a student nurse." Molly corrected sharply, almost snappily, surprising herself with the vehemence of her tone.

Blinking too fast and flushing with embarrassment, Molly rushed to apologise, kicking herself inwardly for revealing more than she meant, because in Molly's head Molly the Medic and Molly the Nurse were too very different people and was not a subject she wanted to explore. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped."

"It's fine, Molly. You're a nurse who has also treated wounds in the field in your previous role. How would you treat a wound? Say a laceration?"

"Cover it, apply pressure."

"Exactly. You take steps to stop the bleeding and provide protection. The mind reacts to emotional trauma very much as you would physically protect a wound. You experienced an emotionally bruising event with the problems in your marriage you protected yourself by withdrawing to find stability and an emotional safe space.

"That's protected the wound. Healing it is about letting it be treated. Uncovering the cut, as it were, to apply stitches for example. Healing an emotional wound is likely to mean talking about it now that you've given yourself some distance and found some emotional stability. Getting some understanding of what having your husband back in your life means.

"You keep using the term 'stuck'. Replace stuck with healing, and do you see what I'm saying?"

"You're saying I need to speak to him to move forward."

"Yes. At some point but I'm asking you first how having Charles back in your life, saying he loves you and wants to try again, makes you feel."

Molly didn't have to struggle to find the words, they came easily: unstable, out of control, panicked. She chose to vocalise the one word the incapsulated all of those feelings.

"Unsafe."

"Good, that's the place to start then. You need to have some sort of conversation with yourself, me or someone you are close to work through why you feel unsafe, then you will be in a better place from which to progress."

"Isn't that what we're doing here?"

"Of course, if you feel it's helping, we should continue and I have an exercise to suggest that I think might help. Have you ever kept a diary?"

"I lived in a house with six siblings, privacy was something you had to fight for. Writing feelings down in a book would have been permission for piss taking if anyone get a hold of it."

"It doesn't have to be a diary. Some people find it helpful to write diary entries or letters to themselves or other stakeholders involved in a turbulent time in their lives. I'm not suggesting anyone but you ever reads it, but it might help you organise your thoughts around the subject as a starting point."

"A can write anything I like?"

"Yes. It could be as simple as jotting down some memories or lines from past conversations. Or writing a letter. It doesn't matter if you ever send it. Think of it as an exercise in self-reflection more than anything else. It's up to you how you carry it out."

 **ooOOoo**

Two days passed with Molly turning the idea of writing things down around in her head and then rejecting the suggestion as nonsense, while she got on with getting on with things.

Dr Sinclair all suggested that Molly start to track the nightmares with a view to them trying imagery rehearsal therapy. Having done this before after the car accident, she was willing to try again as it had produced some mixed, but mostly positive effects before. It was certainly better, in her mind, than going down a pharmaceutical route. So, she diligently wrote down the necessary details about the nightmares, and told herself that meant she was sort of trying out what Dr Sinclair had suggested. Sort of…

 **ooOOoo**

The flowers were beginning to vex Molly more and more because they were a sweet-scented reminder of what she kept thinking about, but wanted to ignore. She supposed that had been part of Charles' plan when he first sent them. Just like the bank cards and house keys. All were meant to be a reminder that he was a presence in her life again.

Jackie observed Molly's growing frustration and agitated dance of avoidance with the flowers with loving amusement as Molly shifted them to different places in the house on an almost daily basis. The vase of golden yellow and orange hybrid tea roses started in the living room, then were shifted in rapid succession from Livingroom to kitchen, kitchen to hall, hall to bathroom.

When the placement of them in their very tiny bathroom meant that Jackie was having to apply her makeup from behind a floral display to see the rooms only mirror, she returned them to living room with a statement that as amusing as the 'war of the roses' was to observe, she needed to be able to apply her makeup in the morning without a face full of petals, thank you very much.

It just reminded Molly that she was annoyed with herself all over again because of her indecisiveness. She prided herself on being a decisive sort of person. It was how she'd reacted when she left. Problem, reaction, action, done. Now she was coming to the see quite how much she'd been lying to herself with that belief. It had actually been more like: problem, reaction, run and hide and keep on fucking hiding.

The rose's return to the living room was a big stinking reminder of that. Their delivery to the bin along with her posting the keys and bank cards back to Charles in Guildford was a step forward in Molly's mind. The pang of guilt that she couldn't explain when she tipped potato peelings on top of the still fresh blooms in the bin was harder to wish away. Moving them to the wheelie bin didn't help any either.

When Jackie caught her moodily starting at the empty vase. She rolled her eyes pointedly, then offered to setup a Spotify play list on the subject of denial for Molly.

Molly's uncharacteristically ill-tempered response to Jackie's well-meaning if a little clumsy banter, had caused Matt to suggest to his girlfriend that she may be needed to back off of Molly a bit and that it was perhaps a good thing that they were visiting his parents this weekend so Molly could have a bit of space.

Jackie wasn't convinced but when Molly said sorry the next day for being a 'moody mare' she accepted the apology willingly but found herself biting her tongue to leave the wider subject of _why_ Molly was being moody alone.

 **ooOOoo**

Friday rolled around, and Molly returned from the hospital to an empty house and a new bunch of flowers. Freesias this time and a personal favourite which had featured in her wedding flowers. Picking up the carefully wrapped bouquet, she found a heart-sinkingly familiar padded envelope on the door step and a note from Brains.

* * *

 ** _Dear Molls_**

 ** _Not that I mind driving up and down the M40 delivery stuff to you from Bossman, because there are worst ways to spend a Friday afternoon (consolidation the Quarter Master's store invoices for Officer Cadets' trainers – sounds thrilling, am I right?) but it would be nice to know the best time to visit so I can actually see you._**

 ** _I'm guessing this is going to be a thing for a while, so give me a bell and let me know when you're going to be home next Friday and we'll arrange to have a brew._**

 ** _Brains, xx_**

 ** _P.S. Mansfield and the rest know I've been back in contact. They're threaten to setup a Facebook Group and Twitter accounts called 'Where's Molly' if you don't get back in contact with them soon. You have been warned. Trust me, nobody wants to deal with Mansfield and Fingers being let loose on Social Media. No one._**

* * *

The flowers went in the vase, the envelope containing the keys and bank cards went bank into Molly's bedside cabinet and she spent her evening meal alone staring at a bunch of Freesias while eating pasta, drinking wine and contemplating what, for Brains, had likely been a very throw away remark about the likelihood of him repeatedly visiting at Charles' request. She came to a simple, honest conclusion. Charles wasn't going to let this go, she knew that. It wasn't in his nature and hiding from it wasn't going to help anything.

 **ooOOoo**

Cross legged in bed later with her laptop open on her knee Molly opened a blank email. Chewing on her lip she typed: -

* * *

 **From:** Molly_James

 **To:** GLane .org

 **Subject: You & Him**

 **I need to know how it started. I don't want apologies or excuses, just the facts. I need to understand why.**

 **Molly.**

* * *

Then clicked send before she had a chance to change her mind.

* * *

Note: imagery reversal therapy (IRT) is an actual thing. It's a cognitive behavioural approach to help reduce and alleviate intense nightmares.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author Note**

 _To the Guest reviewer who had apparently never seen OG but found CJ/Molly as a couple via YouTube and OG FF, it's lovely to know a couple that isn't being written by the show's own original creator is still finding new fans despite not being represented on screen anymore. Welcome to the OG FF crazy train_ _?_ _._

 _And to everyone else, many thanks for the feedback and for sticking with my wordy ramblings._

 **Mood music**

 _Version Of Me – Sasha Sloan, Birds – Imagine Dragons, Cursive – Billie Marten, Easier – Masionair, Speak Your Heart – Lizz Wright, I Gave It All – Aquilo_

 **Chapter Twelve**

* * *

 _Emotional safety comes from within us. It is the "knowing" of what we're feeling; the ability to be able to identify our feelings and then take the ultimate risk of feeling them. Granted, in the presence of war, childhood neglect, trauma, and abuse of all kinds, we may never have known the feeling of being safe at all. It may be absolutely foreign to us. And so we may believe that safety is a dream that will never come true._

 ** _–_** ** _James D. Huysman Psy.D., LCSW_**

* * *

Charles was staring at the black screen of his mobile phone as it lay on the surface of his desk. Very well aware he had work to do, he couldn't seem to stop his preoccupation with the frustratingly silent device because it had been three weeks since he'd first sent the roses and there was still no response from Molly.

Sending the flower was his way of fulfilling a promise his illness had broken between them. Slipping the keys and bank cards into her bag and adding his contact details to her phone had been his deliberate attempt to catch her attention in a less subtle way. After their conversation at the hotel, he'd believed that any response, even an angry one, was better than none, but Molly hadn't responded as he had anticipated. Beyond posting the keys and cards back without even a note, he'd been met with the same wall of silence that had stood between them since she'd left; leaving him firmly on the outside of her life and as unsure of his choices as ever.

Then there was the Brains issue and Molly because, if he was honest with himself, employing Brains–someone who had witnessed his failures and mistakes up close– had been a very difficult decision to make.

It had started out simply enough. His previous administrative support, Corporal Mahoney, a much trusted and leaned upon resource in his role as camp Adjutant, was leaving as her RAF Sergeant husband was being deployed to Catterick from RAF Odiham. Charles had left the selection of her replacement in her trusted hands and gone off on a two-week holiday to the States with Sam and returned to find a smiling, if slight wary, Lance Corporal Wiggerty sitting behind the desk outside his office. It was at that point that he decided serendipity was taking the piss out of him in all seriousness.

What followed for the next fortnight was an exercise in avoidance on both their parts. Charles assumed that Brains knew of his estrangement from Molly. Brains came to his own conclusions. It was everyday gossip around camp that the 'dishy' Major James was very married and not available, he wore his wedding ring, when uniform code allowed, and had pictures of Molly and his son openly displayed on his desk–Brains' assumption was that they had sorted things out between them following Bangladesh.

In the end, Charles outed himself by accident with a throwaway remark made at the weekly staff meeting with the Colonel at which Brains was taking his turn to take notes for minutes. Colonel Alexander's enquiry if Charles would be seeing the wife this weekend produced an automatic response from Charles. Nan kept him, begrudgingly, up to date with Molly's life and Charles answered without thinking first by saying that Molly was in Estonia on a training exercise.

It wasn't a lie, exactly, but his verbal slight of hand to his CO in front of a subordinate who he thought knew the truth about his relationship, or lack of, with his wife threw Charles in a manner that rendered his well-practised officer's poker-face useless. His rapid exit at the end of the meeting and the shouting significance of the firmly closed office door from behind which he stayed for the rest of that day built an awkward atmosphere that lingered lack a bad smell between them into the next week.

It was Brains that broke the near silent dead-lock by asking if he'd done something wrong, because he was getting the feeling that something wasn't right. That this role was important to him since he had finished his OU degree recently and was looking to maybe make a move into SPS Branch of the Adjutant General's Corps. Maybe with a move towards becoming a Support Officer. How everything that happened in Bangladesh–the desperation of the refugees, especially the kids, seeing Bones die–had made him realise he needed to take stock, grow up a bit and make some plans. That he'd met his girlfriend, Lucy, who was doing her qualifying year as a teacher and he wanted to get engaged and settled, so career was important. If he was messing this up in some way, he needed to know why and how to fix it.

Charles realised he was being a bastard. Getting caught up in his own head again–a dangerous occupation–and that he was dragging Brains along for the ride. Over coffees in his office he explained enough without crossing the lines between rank and familiarity for Brains to understand there were difficulties between him and Molly.

The awkward topic of _that_ phone call was brought up by Brains. Charles explained their separation and the PTSD but didn't defend himself regarding Georgie, instead thanked Brains for looking out for Molly. Brains, in turn, explained the estrangement between Molly and her former section mates and it became clear to Charles how ignorant they'd both been of the reality of their situations regarding Molly.

They'd had no choice when their relationship became public knowledge. Molly had made the choice to leave Two Section and for him to stay, but her bonds to her 'boys' had remained tight, until his injuries in Belize and the slow slide of their relationship into the shit. For that, Charles had huge guilt because they might have been a source of support for her. Instead, she'd cut them out of her life and his choices regarding starting something with Georgie had ultimately resulted in her actions.

Telling the truth to each other acted as something of a weird bonding exercise and Charles and Brains rub along well for the next couple of months. It didn't hurt that Brains knew how his Bossman liked to work or that Brains was actually rather good at the job. Then Molly turn up at his house and here he was in the fight for his life to get back all that his illness had taken.

That first bunch of flowers had started it all. Charles had intended to turn up with the flowers himself but Brains, perceptive as ever, had offered an alternative choice. Charles had been withdrawn and borderline sullen on and off all day. Seeing the flowers on Charles' desk and recognising his Major's mood for what it was–nerves– Brains compassionately volunteered to be the delivery agent. Hiding his help with a throwaway remark about how he was driving that way _anyway_ since he was heading home to Liverpool for the weekend.

Charles was grateful for the offer and was hopeful that sending Brains to her might help her reconnect with her old friends. That if he could give her those friendships back, friendships that his decisions had stolen from her, maybe it might help her to see things between them were worth fixing.

It had been successful in certain ways, helping Molly rebuild bridges with the former members of Two Section. No such progress towards for him but, to be fair, he'd known his hopes of an outcome in that direction had been rather spacious thinking on his part.

Opening his desk drawer, he made a decision; it was time to step things up. Charles lifted out Molly's memory box and laid it on his desk. It was a cheap, decorative card box about the size and shape of a large shoe box and contained various mementos Molly had deemed important and collected over their time together. Or rather had deemed important enough to keep–past tense– since he'd found it abandoned in the bin after she left.

He lifted the lid looking down on the familiar contents. A napkin from their first date, a small jar of sand from Afghanistan, boarding ticket from their first foreign holiday together and many other examples. All small knickknacks and of no value to anyone except the people for whom they held memories. To Charles they were priceless.

Pulling the lid off his fountain pen, Charles opening the card that went with his new choice of flowers and added a carefully written note before folding the napkin inside the card and putting it in an envelope ready for delivery.

"Brains!"

Brains appeared through the door, eyes skipping from his CO's face to the flowers wrapped and ready to go in front of him on the desk.

"Ready for me to take them?" he said, holding his hand out to receive the gift and reading the hesitancy in Charles slow release of the flowers with silent sympathy.

Charles sighed inwardly, wishing he was taking them himself, but knowing that would be being too pushy. Nans words from so long ago had stuck with him–that he needed to take things at Molly pace– so his initial approach was baby steps rather than his size ten boots landing on her doorstep. He was beginning to wonder if it was time to ignore that advice. His patience and ability to stay away were running out. Next Friday he was driving to Birmingham whether Molly liked it or not and he'd deal with any fireworks because even they would be better than this tortuous silence between them.

"Thanks. Do you know if she's going to be in?"

"No, sorry, Sir. She's working until late today. Jackie too. Works fine for me, I'm driving back to Liverpool after. Lucy is going to home for the weekend."

Charles tried to squash the unfair burst of jealousy at Brains being able to spend time with his girlfriend when all Charles had stretched ahead of him was a ready meal for one, that he had yet to buy. The weekend wasn't a total loss, though, since he'd have Sam Saturday into Sunday evening.

"Okay, thanks Brains. Have a good weekend."

Once the door closed behind Brains, he picked up his phone and dialled.

Her voicemail picked up after two rings. "Hey, this is Molly, I can't speak right now, please leave a message. Bye!"

"Molly, it's Charles…again. I know you don't want to but we need to talk. Please call me. I love you."

 **ooOOoo**

"Nine o'clock on a Friday night around the kitchen table cracking the books and eating junk food. There's a flash back to my sad social-desert teenager years that I never wanted to live again." Jackie grumbled, grabbing a handful of popcorn and shoving it into her mouth with a groan. "We should be out having fun, or slobbing out in PJs in front of Netflix. I've read the same paragraph ten times it's still not sticking."

Molly looked up from the note pad she was scribbling in and pulled a face at Jackie. "Come on, Jacs. You know this coursework has got to be in before the end of term."

"Which is weeks and weeks away."

"If you want to leave it to the last minute, be my guest. I've not got the brains to get away with that." Molly said, sticking a colour coded Post-it to a page in her text book before returning to her notes.

Molly wished she could be as flippant as Jacs pretended to be about studying but education and her experience of it had been a very hit and miss thing for Molly, leaving her with certain insecurities. Primary school had been easiest for her, taking place during the years when Dave Dawes had held down a job, her Grandfather had still been alive and been a steadying influence on her mother and it had just been Molly and Jade at home. There she had shown promise and enjoyed learning.

"You're paranoid. You've got more between your ears than most people in those lecturer theatres and twice and much talent with the patients on the wards. You're Sergeant Sutherland's favourite."

By High School life had thrown a whole other set of problems at Molly and school became an alienating sort of experience. Too much time away due to helping out at home through one crisis or other after Dave's accident or just straight up bunking off because returning from one stint of absence seemed to leave her further and further behind the class in insurmountable ways, taught Molly to be wary of education rather than open to it. It wasn't as though academic endeavours had been encouraged at home. Being class clown or class hardcase had come easier than owning up to her own insecurities that she was just too thick for the whole experience.

"Yeah right."

"Too bloody right. I overheard her bigging you up to Captain Lewis. How she was going to miss your contribution on the ward while we are away playing soldiers at the end of the spring Semester. Like the place was going to fall apart without you."

"You want to know what's gonna fall apart if we don't crack on? Our grade average if you don't put pen to paper at some point soon."

"You're a slave driver."

"No, I'm just somebody who has to work a bit hard at the academic stuff. So, if you don't want to work on this now, leave me to get on with it."

They continue in silence for another twenty minutes before being interrupted by Molly's mobile buzzing. She reached out to read the Twitter notification, clicking on in it before bursting out laughing. It was a new post from the _Where's Molly_ Twitter group including a picture of Prince William in an RAF Rescue helicopter cockpit with a co-pilot except a picture of Molly's head had been Photo-shopped onto the co-pilot's body with the words: _Moving up, up, up in the world… where's Molly?_

Molly turned the phone screen towards Jackie and she laughed.

"I never knew Dangles had such a talent for graphic design. Bit wasted since he's working for REME these days. My favourite was still you cliff diving topless in Brazil."

Molly made a snorting noise. "Dangles might have done the graphics but that one was all Fingers."

Molly scrolled back through older posts, stopping at the selfie of her and Brains hugging from last week when he'd done his flowers delivery and she'd waited in to meet him. He'd posted the picture himself with the caption: _Molly found, losers!_

"Have you finalised a meet up yet?"

"No, it's bit difficult with everybody working in different platoons or regiments. We're trying to find a weekend in the summer to meet up but it's a work in progress."

"Well count me in. You know how much I love a reunion weekend." Jackie said with a cheeky wink.

"God, don't remind me."

 **ooOOoo**

Another hour passed and it was Molly who found her own attention drifting as she thought back over an interaction with one of the patients today and mulled over Jackie's words about her being as intelligent as anyone else on their course. It wasn't the she exactly agreed with Jackie's assessment, but she was willing to admit that she was doing well at the job. Learning, working on the wards, knowing she was making a different to the patients for whom she provided care. She mattered and the job mattered to her, giving her purpose and strength again from a life that felt like it had crumbled to dust at her feet. That was a huge shift in her self-confidence from when she'd attended her first lecturer with Jackie, looked around at the faces of her fellow students and waited for someone to call her out for being a fraud and in the wrong company. Nearly a year on, she knew this was where she was meant to be. Life had been kind in that way at least.

All that she had now was because she'd got over what had seemed like the insurmountable mountain of gaining qualifications to improve her career. That had come in no small part from Charles and Charles' influence. When things had been good between them, he'd been her unfailing support. Cheering her on through her successes, picking her up off the floor when it got too much, pushing her on when she couldn't find the motivation. From smalls roots, her confidence in her own ability to learn had grown. Without it, she wouldn't be working on the Wards at Queens Elizabeth Hospital being useful, finding worth in herself through her job and building a life without her husband. Wasn't that one of life's most bitchy of ironies?

Charles had been at the start of her journey with the Army and involved in every step since as a central support and influencing element, both positive and negative. The centre of her world until he wasn't and what was she doing now? Dodging his phone calls, ignoring his voicemails and brooding over a vase of flowers because she couldn't make up her mind what to do. It was all so tragically pathetic.

 **ooOOoo**

Sitting in bed that night with her laptop open, Molly checked her email account. Still no reply from Georgie. She wasn't sure if she was relieved or upset.

She taken the time to contact Dr Sinclair. Listened to her advise and considering what was said–that Molly needed to understand why Charles being back in her life made her feel unsafe. Molly had decided she needed to understand something else first. Why things had happened between Georgie and Charles, because, in her mind, that was when she started to feel unsafe. She needed Georgie to reply to start that journey.

 **ooOOoo**

It occurred to Molly that it was sometimes the stories behind the patients rather than their treatment that hit her the hardest. Sitting opposite the young wife of an upper limb amputee, she was trying to talk her through some of the support charities and Army resources available to the young couple as the wife, barely twenty, bounced a wiggling toddler on her hip and tried to look less overwhelmed that she really was.

She'd been on shift when he'd been brought in. A young private injured due to IED in Syria who lost his arm to the elbow, then later to the shoulder after reconstruction efforts were unsuccessful. Out of it on pain meds with his young wife by his side waiting and waiting for him to come around, Molly spent time with her, heard their story, learned about their life together and was invested in a happy outcome.

When he'd been in and out of it and things had gotten tricky after his second operation, they'd been a tight team, them together against his injuries. Now he was passed the worst and life was about returning to a new normal rather than fighting to survive, they were struggling. His injuries and the realisation what it meant to his career leaving a heavy load that had shut him down. It sadly wasn't unexpected that his wife was distancing herself in the same way. Both being too overwhelmed to find a way to reach for each other in the middle of their turmoil.

Sitting on the outside looking into their struggles, Molly just wanted to scoop them both up and tell them it was going to be okay. Of course, she wouldn't. A younger version of her might have, believing that anything, somehow, could be made better by just trying. The older version of her knew that sometimes in life things just didn't happen like that. The professional version of her didn't because it wasn't her role to insert herself into the lives of her patients. All that aside, the issue tugged her for the rest of the day long after the meeting with the wife was over and she'd been called to assistant and observe in theatre.

 **ooOOoo**

Saturday morning found Charles sitting in McDonalds in Hampton trying to re-direct Sam towards his half-eaten pancake breakfast while Sam was more interested in telling his Dad why the trampolining park he'd been to with his Mum and Molly was 200% more interesting than the swimming pool outing that his Dad had planned after they got back to Guildford.

"You need to get that finished. We need to head soon or we'll get stuck in the rugby traffic."

Sam picked up a large piece of pancake and shoved it haphazardly into his mouth. "Wouldn't get stuck if we went to the trampolining park."

"Don't talk with your mouth full." Sam rolled his eyes, and ducked to the side as his dad playfully reached to flick him on the ear.

When his mobile starting buzzing in his pocket, Charles lifted it to his ear without checking who the caller was, as he tapped the table in front of Sam, pointing at the remaining food.

"Charles James. Speaking. I see… I'll be they as soon as I can. Yes, thank you."

Ending the call, Charles pulled on his jacket and passed Sam's over to him.

"Dad?"

"Change of plans. We need to head into London. It seems Nans been in a bit of an accident. She's fine." Charles said quickly, trying to soothe the suddenly worried look on Sam's face. "I think she'd like a visit and maybe a Sammie cuddle. Come on."

"I can do that." Sam said confidently. "Can we get grapes? Finlay said when his Granny wasn't well, he bought her grapes. I don't know if Nan likes grapes. She likes pick'n'mix, can we get some of that?"

"I'm not sure they'll be time. There might be a shop at the hospital. Perhaps we can get something there."

"Can we get gin. She says Granddad Dave drives her to the gin, so I think she might like that, too."

Charles tried not to laugh, managing to smother an outright laugh into a quiet snort of amusement. "I'm not sure she'd be allowed gin in hospital, but I'm sure Nan would think your idea was great."

Climbing into the car, he tried calling Molly, but got her voicemail. She was either working or call screening him, but he suspected the latter since the hospital hadn't been able to get a hold of her either apparently.

"Got your seat belt on? Good, let's get going then."


	13. Chapter 13

**Author Note**

 _As always, many thanks for the feedback._

 **Mood music**

 _What Have We Become – The Sweeplings, Between The Wars – Allman Brown, Making it Up – Sarah Blasko, Thursday– Jess Glynne, Illusory Light–Sarah Blasko_

 **Chapter Thirteen**

* * *

 _Every person is driven to self-deceive, simply to get out of the discomfort of the truth. The best relationships are with people who will not let you be blind. They reveal your hidden strengths and your concealed wounds._ _ **― Vironika Tugaleva**_

* * *

Molly was a heavily breathing, sweaty mess by the time she had ran at a flat-out sprint from one end of the hospital to the other to get back to her car. Struggling to get her breathing back under control, she turned the key in her car's ignition and the engine turned over reassuringly. She was about to look behind her ready to reverse out of the parking space, when her phone's email alert pinged and flashed a message to indicate that she had a new email from Georgie.

With an angry bat of her hand, she swept the phone off the seat and into the open rucksack sitting on the floor in front of the front passenger seat.

Boiling with an unhealthy mix of fury and fear, she wanted to yell fuck off to Georgie for finally replying, to her parents for their shitty timing in heading off on some Sun holiday deal to Skegness with the kids leaving Nan on her own, to her Ward Sister for not realising the message left for her while she was working in Theatre was urgent enough to have her called out sooner, and at herself for being a crap Granddaughter and not calling and keeping in touch enough and for being more than a hours drive away when an emergency was happening.

 **ooOOoo**

One and half worrisome hours later, Molly was standing on the threshold of her Nan's hospital room still in Army green scrubs taking in the scene of Nan tucked up in bed, bandaged wrist, bruised face with worried eyes but feeling like she could finally breathe easy for the first time since she'd bolted from the Ward Sister's office. Nan was awake, looking towards her with an alert expression and looking 100% better than the unhelpfully graphic images her brain had been creating on the drive from Birmingham. 

"Jesus, Nan. You okay? You scared the living daylights outta of me."

A movement to the side of the bed drew Molly's attention as Charles rose from sitting in a chair to hover by the bedside. His body language scream discomfort as he raked a hand through his hair and he looked extremely awkward like a naughty child caught in the act of mischief.

The words _what the hell are you doing here?_ Died on her lips, as Sam, who she'd not noticed snuggled in next to her Nan launched himself with an enthusiastic call of her name.

"Molly!"

"Ooof! Steady there." Molly gasped as Sam's small but surprisingly solid body connected with her own as she automatically leaned down to catch him in her arms.

"Sam. Be careful!"

Sam ignored his Dad's admonishment, burrowing himself against Molly's crouching warmth as he started talking at dizzying speed. As if he was worried he'd forget to say something unless he got the words out in a hurry.

"Nan had a car accident driving Edward's car because somebody bump into her because apparently, they're a blind idiot, but I don't know who's a blind idiot. Edward is Nan's boyfriend but he says I should call him Teddy. I said that made him sound like a bear and I wanted to call him Eddy. He said that was okay. Nan's okay so we bought her sweets at the shop 'cause she doesn't like grapes even though Finlay at school said he bought his nana grapes when she was poorly." Sam paused to take a big breath. "I said that Finlay was stupid because Nan likes sweets and she laughed and agreed, so then I knew she was alright, and he's a big know-it-all anyway. I wanted to get Nan gin, but Dad said no. Then you arrived and now you know what happened. I've missed you."

"I've missed you too and that's a lot of information all at once."

"I know. Mum says I talk too fast sometime. Like a verbal machine gun, she says."

"Sounds like your mum."

"You looked worried when you arrived, so I wanted you to know what was going on."

"I'm all caught up. You did a brilliant job."

Molly's eyes tracked between Charles who was still hovering awkwardly and her Nan whose expression suddenly held a warning.

"Dad called and called you, but you didn't answer."

"I was at work." Molly said, moving to stand up. "No phones allowed, but I'm here now."

Sam snuggled into her side. "Daddy was worried. You should answer your phone."

"I know. I'll make sure to be better at that."

Molly caught Charles' shift of movement, and the tightening of his expression and responded with a glare, assuming he was expressing annoyance at her phone dodging his calls for the last couple of weeks.

"Good." Sam said, sweetly oblivious to the building tension in the room. "When I _finally_ get a mobile phone, I'll always answer it."

"Well, you know what your mum says."

"Not until I'm ten. She's _boring_."

Despite herself, Molly laughed at his frustrated sighing and pouting. "Let's not tell her that, yeah?"

"Are you okay, Nan? All I heard was that you'd been in an accident and with Mum and Dad being away with the kids I was half out of my nut with worry."

"Don't fuss, Molls. I'm bruised and was a bit dizzy after from the air bag. The ambulance people wouldn't listen when I said I was fine. Wasn't even my bleedin' fault! You remember that daft old git Rodger from my sheltering housing? He's still not got rid of that rust bucket of a Corsa of his despite not having a license anymore. His GP took it off him because he's blind as a bat. Stupid fool drove into the back of me when I was leaving the carpark. Proper rammed me at speed."

Skipping the obvious questions of who the hell was Eddy and why was she driving his car, Molly reserved those for later.

"But you're okay?"

"Didn't I just say I was?" Marge replied with a somewhat put-upon tone, never being one to enjoy being fussed around. "Despite arguing with them, they brought me here and I've been sitting around like a spare part taking up space ever since. The hospital called Charles when they couldn't get through to you. Sammie has been supervising his Dad looking after me."

Sam giggled at the idea of being in charge of his dad.

Molly's gaze shifted towards Charles.

"About that, exactly why did the hospital call–"

"Sammie, can you help your old Nan with something?"

Marge talked across Molly with a repeat of her earlier warning look. Molly recognised it well enough from when she was a kid. It was the one that her Nan would deploy if her or Jade were about to kick off in public over nonsense and promised consequences if they didn't behave. Her mum had always lamented that she never successfully developed 'the look'.

"Can you go with your Dad and get me a drink. A cup of tea would be just the ticket. Maybe something for Molly and yourself as well?"

"I can do that. Come on, Dad. I want hot chocolate." Sam said eagerly, walking over to the door with a spring in his step. "I bet Molly would like hot chocolate, too. Wouldn't you?"

"I don't mind, Sam." Molly said automatically, even though a drink, especially non-alcoholic, was about the last thing she wanted in the circumstances.

Nan and Charles exchanged a look, on her nod, he turned towards Molly, back straightening like he was ready for a fight. Molly copied his straight posture while struggling to keep her expression passive to cover her inner turmoil as he closed the distance between them.

One step, twos steps and they were side by side and Molly could feel her skin prickle with anxious tension. The visceral effect of smelling the familiar scent of his aftershave and having him standing close enough for her to be able to see the lighter golden-brown flecks in his dark brown eyes, froze Molly to the spot two panicky breathes away from a flight response that had her heart flying in her chest in readiness.

As if it was the most normal thing to do in the world, and as if his own heart wasn't banging in his chest fit to burst, Charles pressed a whisper soft kiss to Molly's forehead. Involuntarily she lifted her hand, gripping his forearm as though she needed a moment to balance. She felt the tremble of reaction to her touch shiver through his muscles as he felt Molly's in the way she leaned infinitesimally towards him as his lips lifted from her skin and her hand let go of his arm. Then the moment was over, and he was out the door with a bouncing Sam at his side, like it had never happened.

Molly jumped in reaction to her Nan making an abrupt tutting sound. Too caught up in the aftermath of the moment to remember that she wasn't alone.

"To have that kind of connection with someone and to let it get away from you is a waste. A bleedin' waste."

Struggling to get back into the reality of the room, Nans scolding voice was like a bucket of cold water down Molly's back.

"What's going on. Why is he here?" Molly said, coming out fighting in reaction.

"You might have got away with dictating to your mum, but you're not going to get away with that with me young lady, so knock it bleedin' off."

"He came looking for you after he left. I told him he'd been a fool for not getting help, for not listening, for letting you leave. He admitted it all and he needed someone. I wasn't willing to turn him away. You asked me not to talk to him about what was going on with you. I've respected that.

"As to why he's here. I wanted another emergency contact without adding to your mum's work load. Wasn't going to use your Dad, was I?"

"Fine, but why him?"

"That's my business, aint it?"

"I know, but–"

"Enough, Molly. You're starting to sound like a pouting toddler. Don't you think it's about time you moved passed this game of hide and seek you've been playing? Or at least tried? He's a good man, your Charles. It's the shit in life that got in the way, but you both made mistakes."

"Both made mistakes? I didn't shag my wife's former mate on duty."

Nan shook her head, her expression frustrated. As it always did with her Nan, Molly burned under the weight of her disapproval. Nan's opinion had always matter to Molly. Her approval had been an important and steadying counter balance to the chaos that her family life had often been.

"You've always had courage, Molly, but you can't run from your roots. You've got both of your parents in you. Your mum's heart and your dad's bloody-mindedness. Those eyes of years, are all yours. Wide open and takin' in everything ever since you were tiny. You saw too much, and I'll be honest, your mum should have been stronger; protected you better. Instead you learn to protect yourself. It colours how you reacted to Charles. You've got to admit it. You left your marriage because you let your insecurities get the better of you while he was strugglin'."

"Then he shagged her. I see. So, you're saying it's my fault?" Molly said, angry tears springing to her eyes.

"No, I'm saying it was a shit situation that you both got caught in. He should have got himself help sooner and shouldn't have run from a struggling marriage by hiding in work and a new bit of fluff. You shouldn't have run away from your marriage on the strength of a phone call then cut all communications like you were re-building a new and improved version of the bleedin' Berlin Wall."

"Are you saying I should have stayed? After I caught him texting her?"

"No, but I am sayin' you should have confronted him about it not run away to the other side of the world."

"I had the best teacher for the that strategy, believe me."

"He hurt you. You left to protect yourself. But it's not as simple as that, is it? He was ill, you got insecure and run than blocked it all out. There's a middle ground where you both should have talked about it all. That never happened."

"You have to have something to say to wanna to talk." Molly said drily, turning away to try to hide the fact she was fighting tears.

"There, right there. That pig-headedness is all your toss pot of father. You just won't bend, will you? He came looking for you, afterwards. Realised that it had all gone to shit because he wouldn't get help for the mess his head was in. You made sure he didn't have a path back to you."

"What else was I supposed to do? I was replaced straight away. I couldn't face seeing them together. It would have ended me."

"And you've been hiding ever since. You should have moved on by now. Ended it or fixed things. Instead your stuck, aint you?"

"I'm dealing with it the best I know how. What else am I supposed to do?"

"Be happy again. Happy with somebody else or happy with him. It doesn't matter which."

"I am happy. I've got my job… I keep busy." Molly said, but even to her own ears her counter argument sounded hollow.

Marge turned Molly around with a hand on her arm and she sat on the edge of the bed as Marge reached up to hold her face in her small age wrinkled hands. She took in her Granddaughter's expression; the stubborn set to her jaw, too wide-open green in which unshed tears pooled but didn't quite flow.

Molly held the intensity of Marge's gaze, defiantly and defensive for the beat of a few seconds until she crumbled and shut her eyes, leaning in against the warm of Marge's suddenly vulnerable and seeking comfort from her Grandmother as would have when she was a child.

"Come, 'ere, you daft mare." Marge said gently as Molly moved into her open arms.

"This isn't what happiness looks like, Mols. It just isn't." Marge said, laying her head against the top of Molly's hair. "It's out there waiting for you. You've just gotta be brave enough to reach for it."

 **ooOOoo**

Molly had mostly got herself back together again by the time Charles and a still bouncing Sam returned with a cardboard tray with covered cups. One long hug later and help from her Nans deliberately distracting chatting, while she'd worked on calming herself, and she'd been given one answer at least. The identity of Edward who apparently had never owned a Triumph Herald.

Sam made a b-line for Molly who was sitting in the chair beside the bed as Charles placed the cups onto the over the bed table before retreating several steps to stand by the wall.

Nan held he her hand out to Sam, before he had a chance to reach Molly, showing her mobile phone to him like tempting a bird with a piece of bread.

"Come on over 'ere, Sammie. Maud who lives next door was showing me this game called Candy Crush. I need you to show me how to play it so I can beat her at it. She reckons I'm rubbish at it."

Sam's eyes practically lit up on seeing the phone. "It's _so_ easy."

"I thought you neighbour was called Margaret." Molly said, suspiciously.

"We got you tea, Nan, like you wanted." Sam said, pushing one of the plastic lidded paper cups across the table towards Nan's waiting hand. "And one for Molly, because Dad said she like that better than hot chocolate."

"Aren't you a gentleman like your Dad, but you're Dads wrong. Molly likes hot chocolate. Don't you, Molls?"

"Yes, but tea would be–"

"Just fine for me, I'm parched. Two would be just the ticket. Molly and your Dad can go get some more drinks."

"I _told you_ we should have got another hot chocolate, Dad."

Charles eyed the cup in his hand, and placed it back onto the table. "Molly can have mine, Sam. It's fine."

"Look, I'm good, really." Molly said.

"You look thirsty too, Sammie. Would you like another hot chocolate?" Nan said with a pointed look towards Charles and Molly, then back at Sam. "Molly and your Dad can get some more, and you can show me this Candy Crush and they can go talk."

"That really ain't necessary." Molly protested.

"Oh, it is. Now go get yourself down to that caf, Molly Dawes, before you make me make you."

The furious look Molly throw back at her grandmother, followed by her shoving herself up and out of the chair hard enough to send it sliding back on the floor by a couple of inches, was a strop worthy of her former teenage self.

Charles' dark eyes tracked backward and forward between Molly and Nan warily as the two women held a silent conversation for several seconds.

Molly had never won a battle of wills with her Nan when she'd set her mind to something back then, and it wasn't going to be different now–they both knew that much. With a smothered groan, Molly turned towards the door, pausing to look at Charles.

"You coming?"

"Err…" Charles blinked slowly, the expression on is face nonplussed. As if he couldn't quite believe what he'd watched happening was _actually_ happening. "Yes, yep, coming."

Sam looking up from the screen of Nan's mobile phone briefly, watching as his father walked out of doorway following Molly's stiff-backed stride, before returning to the game of Candy Crush he'd started with a sigh.

"Adults are silly."

"You 'ave no idea how right you are, Sammie."


	14. Chapter 14

**Mood music**

 _I Won't – Richards Walters, Limits – Arctic Lake, People Change – Machineheart, Life Support – Kris Angelis, Bad Liar – Imagine Dragons, Only Autumn–Eliza Elliott, Let It All Go – Rhodes & Birdy._

 **Chapter Fourteen**

* * *

 _Bravery is the choice to show up and listen to another person, be it a loved one or perceived foe, even when it is uncomfortable, painful, or the last thing you want to do._ _ **― Alaric Hutchinson**_

* * *

Charles wrapped his fingers around his second untouched beverage of the morning–something that was pretending to be coffee– and let his gaze drift across the posters on the wall behind Molly's determinedly turned away from him profile. A poster featuring cartoon bugs and the smiling face of a male doctor offered to inform him about flu facts versus flu fiction. He was almost willing to take it up on the offer, because just about anything would be better than the strained atmosphere stretching between them.

Avoidance would have been the easier path, instead he looked at her down-turned head with a masochistic sort of inevitability. It was like watching a car crash happen–knowing that something awful might be about to occur and at the same time being completely unable to look away. Molly had always been his inevitability, what she might say next was potentially the accident he could not look away from.

On the tortuously silent walk from Marge's hospital room to the café, Molly had let her hair down from its former uniform dress-code neat French Plait. Now sat across a table from each other, she was using her loose hair to hide behind such that he couldn't see her expression properly, but the death grip she had on the undrunk mug of tea in front of her spoke loudly enough without words. Her whole body-language screamed tension.

Once upon a time he would have held her in his arms and said, "Come on, just speak to me," but it wasn't that simple between them anymore. He couldn't read Molly when once she'd been an open book to him, and he was left with unanswerable questions and very little connection or invitation into his wife's life. Getting her to be here at all had been a major, Marge Smith sponsored, miracle.

Bridling a sigh, Charles broke the silence because somebody had to be the first to speak.

"So, your course..." he said, voice oddly hoarse, forcing him to clear his throat before continuing. "Nursing. Amazing achievement."

In response, Molly's body language uncoiled, as though his words had reanimated her and she turned her mug of tea around, curling her fingers around the handle and lifted to her lips with slow, deliberate movements.

Charles recognised her fiddling with the drink for what it was–a keeping busy sort of a gesture. The tea had to be at best tepid but likely, worst, stone cold, but Molly took two large swallows. Charles hid his inappropriate, for the moment, humour when he saw her face scrunch up fleetingly with disgust. Her show of stubbornness gave him a weird sort of comfort because it meant, despite all the pain he'd caused, Molly had come out of still true to herself. There was a strength in her stubbornness that had always been all her own.

"It seemed like a good next step." she replied carefully, laying the mug down and lifting her eyes to his.

"Enjoying it?"

"Yes."

"Getting on with your new C.O?"

"Yes."

Molly's response reminded Charles of the formal and polite answers from soldiers to a higher-up handing out medals.

Looking forward to getting home, sir...

Enjoyed the mission, Sir...

Carefully worded answers providing the right answer rather than the actual answer.

Molly shifted in her seat, and Charles watch her gaze slide towards the exit and he recognised that keeping their awkward as death conversation going was his only hope at getting her to stay and maybe talk about something more meaningful.

"Always thought you might go down the Senior CMT route."

"Why?" Molly replied. Her body language suddenly straighter, as she drew herself into a small tight shape against the back of her chair.

Unsure why he'd cause such a reaction, Charles paused not knowing what the right thing to say was, only that he'd somehow said the wrong thing about something that should have been a very benign subject.

"I don't know..."

Sitting up straighter himself, Charles gave himself a mental slap, because he was making a clumsy mess of this conversation and he could not afford to fuck this up.

"You've always been capable of taking on more," he said with more confidence. "I just thought being out in the thick of things as a Medic was more your bag than in a field hospital or NHS unit."

"Yeah, well people change, don't they?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to say not that much because they'd had this conversation before, about career aspirations and what life outside of the Army might look like for them both. Molly's thoughts had been around progression towards a Senior CMT role maybe with a view to working as a paramedic.

"I guess they do."

Then he realised the mistake he'd made because he'd been the one to change, hadn't he? Everything in Molly's life had changed as a result. Neither of the them were the same. Right in front of him, Molly's expression shifted from stoically neutral to angry and he braced himself accordingly.

"The roses?"

"First flowers I ever gave you."

"Freesias?"

"Where in your wedding headdress and bouquet."

"Tulips?"

"The first weekend we ever went away together was to Amsterdam–"

"You think I don't remember all that? That I've got some sort of faulty memory or something?" Molly said, her voice exploding across Charles' calm response. Not quite shouting, but loud enough to draw attention from the occupants of several of the tables close by.

"No, of course not."

"Of course not," she repeated sarcastically before swing around to deliver the stink-eye to a woman at one table who had blatantly turned in her seat and was now openly staring. She turned back around in response to Molly's glaring.

"I wish I didn't remember all of it." Molly said, voice quieter as she rubbed her hand across her face, as though trying to compose herself. "The napkin. That was a low bloody blow".

"That was never my intention."

"Just what was your intention, exactly?"

"You wouldn't speak to me. I wanted to remind you we had three–nearly four– amazing years together–"

"I might question your maths there."

"Does it matter?"

"Suppose not. It was all worth nothing in the end."

"You've never been nothing to me."

"Replaceable then."

"Or that. Look, maybe I went about things the wrong way."

"You think?"

"I wanted you to talk to me. Break this wall of silence you've built."

Molly's eyebrows rose challengingly at his use of 'you've built' and Charles tried to back track to a use less inflammatory language.

"That we've both contributed to." He leaned in towards her across the table, his voice urgent. "We can't keep ignoring what happened between us. We need to talk!"

"Well I'm here now. What do you want to talk about?"

"Us. You. Your life now. Lessons learnt. Anything…" he said, running an agitated hand through his hair "Just, please, don't shut me out again."

"Anything?" she said with a challenging tilt to her head that was all about defensive defiance. "Lessons learnt?"

"Anything." he replied and he meant it because honesty was about all he had left to offer.

"I'll tell you one lesson I learnt." Her voice was cold, hostile with temper. "That my expectations on happy ever afters were hollow. That loving someone with everything that you have in you is never enough and that relying on anyone but yourself is reckless, damaging and downright fucking stupid. That's what I learned."

"Bit like the way you left me feeling before I left for Belize, when you told me I needed to leave you."

The words were out of his mouth, hostile and accusing before he had a chance to stop them. He'd expected her to use attack an as a defensive response, almost school himself to be ready for it, but his own defensive snapped back response caught him by surprise. Like another person had said the words on his behalf, but there was no proxy sitting at the table with them. The words and sentiments were all his own.

Molly practically recoiled in response; eyes wide with hurt for the beat of a few seconds before they were suddenly guarded again.

"Look I'm sorry, I didn't mean–"

"Yeah you did. And I get it. We both played a part in this. I know I sent you off to Belize with my doubts in your head, but everything after was all you."

"I know."

"Why did you start texting her at Headley? I never could get my head round that. I was there, from the minute they medevacked you into Birmingham." Molly said, her voice cracking. "I was scared to death, but I was right there by your side, and you went and done that."

He reached for her hands automatically, responding to the pain her voice by wanting to offer comfort. Molly moved just as fast, tucking her hands away in her lap under the table as she looked away from his intense gaze. Instead, casting her gaze around the room as though she could quite manage to look at him in that moment.

"Actually, don't answer that, I don't want to know because it doesn't bloody matter anymore, does it?" she said, shoving back from the table, chair scrapping across the floor with the force of the movement. "None of it matters."

He was on his feet as fast as she was anticipating her bolting, then following her as she beat a retreat out of the café, catching her up in the corridor by the exit, with a hand or her arm as a gentle restraint. He steered them out of the flow of people coming in through the main entrance to stand to side by the wall.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped." he said, letting go of her arm before she had a chance to pull away.

"Wasn't as though I was exactly being quiet." she replied, her eyes looking beyond his shoulder to the entrance of the café.

Charles turned to see what she was looking at and caught the eye of the woman who'd been staring at them earlier as she walked out off down the corridor casting furtive looks over her shoulder. He moved instinctively, blocking Molly protectively from the view of the noisy busy-body with his shoulders as Molly stood leaning against the wall.

"I don't care about any of that. Not one bit. Be a loud as you like. Just please, stop running, Molly."

Molly studied his face silently for several seconds, leaving Charles wondering what she saw in his features. Her expression was oddly calm. A complete contrast to her earlier outburst.

"I won't run."

His relief at her response had him shutting his eyes for the briefest moments as he struggled to collect himself.

"Thank you. Can we go outside, maybe walk and talk?" he asked, indicating with his hand for her to precede him.

She headed out, crossing the road by the Ambulance bay towards a patch of grass at the side of a carpark. They walked side by side towards a nearby park type bench set to the side of a small flower border between the lawn and the road. Recently vacated by a smoker, the smell of cigarettes hung in the air as she sat down. Charles followed, angling his body towards hers despite the way Molly had her body turned away in comparison.

"I told Georgie in the jungle all the reasons why I was losing you. How I couldn't function at home. That you said I needed to leave you."

"I said you needed to get help or leave."

"That wasn't what I managed to get my head around at the time. I told her the uniform was the only thing holding me together at work."

"Yeah, well maybe we were both guilty of hiding behind the uniform back then."

"Perhaps."

Molly sighed. "I don't think either of us were seeing things, or each other clearly. Were we?"

"No. I guess we weren't."

"What else did you tell her?"

"Just that really." He signed. "My head was messed up with the fever was setting in but it seemed so simple at the time. Logical. We'd both lost the people that matter the most to us." He paused, trying to read Molly's expression as she stared off into to middle distance. "I suggested maybe we could build something together. Maybe make something out of all that lose."

She flinched. It was subtle. No subtle that a stranger might have missed the infinitesimal tightening of her facial muscle, but Charles read it easily and regret it the minute his words caused her pain.

"You still had me. You still had me and you were offer her that?"

"It wasn't logically, or even rational but it was what happened."

"Then I woke up in hospital in Birmingham and you were there telling me it was going to be okay. Telling me you loved me. It was like some sort of miracle because in despite all the ways I'd fucked things up between us you were there when I needed you."

For the first time since they had sat down, she turned to face him.

"I tried so _hard_ to be careful to say the right things, not to push you. To be supportive and you seemed to need me, at least at first. For a while it felt like I'd gotten you back. Then you got stronger and started talking about getting back to work and I could see it all happening again. The silences, distance."

"I'm not sure when it switched in my head… and I know I didn't see things clearly back then, but to me you seemed so guarded, withdrawn. Like you were there out of duty because I'd messed up and got myself injured."

"I was never there out of duty. You removed yourself from me emotionally inside your own head, just like it happened before and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it."

"I know, Molly. I'm sorry that I ever saw it that way. Things might have been so different if I just swallowed by pride and got help sooner or been able to see things more clearly before you left for Afghanistan again."

"Is there any point dragging it all up again? You can have regrets, but they won't change anything. It's pointless."

"We need to talk about but this. Why? To make you feel better? Because it sure as shit isn't making me anything like good."

"Where did it go so wrong between us?" he asked, his voice vulnerable. "We used to be so good at communicating with each other, right from the start. Rank, backgrounds, none of it mattered. I was drawn to you because just talking to you could make everything right in my day. We lost that somewhere along the way."

"You're asking the wrong person. I don't have the answers. Nan says it's just the shit in life that got in the way."

"Simplistic but truthful analysis."

"All I know is it felt like we were strangers. Like I didn't know my own husband anymore and I've never felt lonelier in my life."

"I'm sorry–"

She held her hand up, asking without words for him stop the using the word sorry. It didn't help. It wasn't constructive and she heard it too many times for it to have any meaning anymore beyond being just another word.

"Do you ever wonder, if Elvis hadn't died, if we'd still be together?"

"You don't think we would?" Charles asked, clearly confused by her doubts.

"Us ending made me look at a lot of things I thought were solid in my life. It rocked everything I believed in. Why wouldn't it make me think that? There were so many reasons why we shouldn't have worked and only a few why we could."

"I never believed that. Didn't I tell you that, show you that a hundred different ways when we were together?"

"Yeah, you did and I believed you."

"Until I didn't show you anymore."

Tucking her hair behind her ears, she shrugged. "Something like that."

"It wasn't that I didn't love you. The PTSD was like being in the eye of a hurricane. The numbness, detachment gives a kind of fake calm. It removes you from the reality of your world and life being smashed to bits around you. When the world stops spinning and the numbness falls away all you have left is the wreckage."

"You lost Elvis, probably the most important person in your life after Sam. I understood all that. How it changed you. The pain. Your guilt. All I wanted to do was be there for you. Instead of turning to me you turned away."

"Elvis wasn't the most important person in my life. You were, you and Sam both. But you're right that losing Elvis changed me. I wasn't who you feel in love with or who Sam knew as a dad. The shell that was left wasn't worth needing. That's how I felt."

"I asked you to get help. Over and over again, I asked."

"I know but all I heard was that I should leave you, that maybe we didn't have a future, you were having doubts. It seemed pretty clear that you didn't need me. I didn't pursue Georgie because I didn't love you anymore. By then I thought I'd already lost you and then I did lose you."

"And you had Georgie warmed up, ready and waiting for you in Bangladesh."

"It wasn't like that."

"You keep saying that."

"I know and I know it sounds like a constantly making excuses for the inexcusable."

"You were a free agent by that point. I said things were over before you and her got physical." Molly shrugged. Her attempt at being casual about the most hurtful event in her life. "You can have a clear conscience."

"I'll never have a clear conscious. I was a coward. I run away from our marriage but I was never running towards Georgie to replace you. She was never a better option. You were all I wanted, are all I want."

"So, you say."

"I don't know what else to do or say to convince you."

"I decided I needed to hear both sides of the story. I contacted Georgie."

She'd said it to challenge him. Expecting to force him onto the proverbial back foot. Instead he looked relieved.

"Good. That's good."

"Why?"

"Maybe she can convince you. I've never lied to you. I destroyed everything between us, but I never lied." Molly grimaced then laughed humourlessly and Charles watched helplessly as pain chased across her face before being hidden behind an unsmiling mask.

"Like a miracle? Is that how you put it? The second chance, come to Jesus accident. Fuck, but I was a naïve idiot because it was already too late by then, wasn't it? Your head had already turned towards Georgie."

"Yes, and no. My judgement was beyond fucked up by then. I was struggling to feeling much of anything but lost. You seemed so distant. Things between us seemed impossibly broken. I was losing Sam. Work was the only solid thing I seemed to have. Georgie was part of that and all mixed up with the loss of Elvis. I'm not trying to justify what happened later, but that was my thought process at the time. If it could even be given any form to be called a process. I was drowning. Working was a life-line, Georgie was someone who'd lost what I'd lost. A common bond. Then you went back to Afghan and left me."

"And you ran off to Bangladesh, just like you'd done when you went to Nigeria and Belize."

"Yes." he replied, his tone quiet in contrast to rising anger in Molly's.

"I'd read the texts. You asking her to contact you, visit, to talk about what you'd shared in the jungle. I know she didn't reply but you were clearly pushing for more. Was it any surprise I ran? Maybe work was all I thought I had that was solid anymore."

"I know. I'm not trying to justify it. I just trying to explain."

Molly nodded tensely. A silent indication that he should continue.

"Then the emails and the phone calls started. You were having doubts. Maybe we didn't have a future. It just solidified by belief that what we had was too broken and you wanted out."

"All I wanted was one tiny sign from you that you want us to try to fix things. Anything. I would have accepted anything. The tiniest crumble of hope. Instead all you gave me was emotionlessness and avoidance."

"I wasn't capable of giving you anything else. The emotion wasn't there to show, but do you really think I was any different under the weight of all that?" he asked, his voice cracking. "All you gave me were you doubts. All my own head was giving me was anxiety that I was dragging you down with me. That you were already gone. That you wanted out. We were both struggling with the same things and the doubts and the distance meant neither of us could see it."

"And that's were Georgie came into things."

"What can I say to make you understand? It wasn't about replacements, it was about comfort, I suppose, finding a connection again. Course it was flawed logic. I realised that after the cliff jump. Me fucking things up again. I couldn't connect with anyone any better than she could. We were both too…damaged."

 _We both had PTSD and we were both denying it…_ Georgie's words from their meeting in the cemetery came back to Molly in a silent rush of memory and realisation that it all started and ended with Elvis. It always had.

"I wonder what Elvis's reaction to this would have been." Molly said, but without heat. The thought having passed through her mind and out as words before she could silence them. Talking about Elvis hurt Charles, she knew that but despite all the pain and angry between them, her question wasn't meant to wound.

Surprisingly it was wry humour rather than pain reflected on his face.

"The delivery of a bloody good thrashing, I'd imagine.

"Then he'd get some sort of booze out."

"Yes, Tequila or Jack Daniels probably."

"And he'd have talk it out with you, wouldn't he?"

"Yep, he would. You know, right back to when were at school together. I was supposedly the sensible one out of us, but he was always the one with the heart."

The glaze of tears in his eyes was easy to see, but when he'd once have hidden from her, he didn't try to hide it from her now. The naked emotion was loud in his dark brown eyes and that easy display of it meant emotion meant he had, as he'd said, healed.

"I still miss him, you know? Every bloody day."

"I know. I miss him too."

"I miss you as well even more."

"Charles–"

"I know, I know you don't want to hear more of the same sentiments. You've heard them before but can you at least tell me you feel the same?"

"You want the brutal truth?"

"I always want to hear the truth from you."

"I try not to think about you at all. That works sometimes but I do miss, us… what we used to have and missing you is part of that. But that's gone. It can't be the same again. So, trying not to think about it at all is what I keep on trying because the rest of it is just path to madness, ain't it?"

He leaned forward, dropping his clenched hands between is knees and studying the ground and his feet as though they were suddenly fascinating. A muscle jumping in his jaw illustrated how tense he was suddenly.

"Are you happy at least? Can you tell me that much?"

"I'm not sure I know what happy means anymore." she said and watched as he looked up at her again with pain darkening his eyes.

Molly realised her unfortunate choice of words too late because she honestly hadn't been aiming for a cheap, hurtful shot but it only seeing his reaction that she realised his reasons behind the question. The first promised he'd made right at the very beginning of them. That all he wanted to do was make her happy.

"I'm not saying that to be cruel. What I mean is I'm not sure if a recognise the difference between getting on with life and being happy. The two kinda blurred into each other. Getting on with things while trying to be happy, it felt the same."

"Mutually assured destruction."

"I might need to take your word for that. Too many big words."

He laughed, inappropriately and without true humour and a roll of his eyes that suggested he didn't really believe in her confessed lack of understanding.

"I mean you can't be happy unless you keep going and you can't keep going unless you can ultimately be happy at some point. "

"Something like that, I suppose."

He was back to studying his feet again. "That wasn't…What I'm trying to ask is if you've managed to find happiness with anyone else since… we've been apart for a year. I'd understand if you–"

Molly wasn't sure if she wanted to shake him or shoot him. What right did he have to judge or give permission?

"How very magnanimous of you."

"Am I coming across as a prick?"

"A bit, but you're right, there was somebody else, after we ended."

"That's fair. We weren't together."

"For fucks sake, Charles. What right do you have–"

"I know, I don't. I'm sorry. Fuck, I'm making a mess of this. That wasn't what I meant."

"Really? What exactly do you mean? I don't need your permission or approval."

"I'm sorry I making a fool of myself. I saw the photos on your phone and I know I shouldn't pry, it's just hard to accept."

"Bit like you and Georgie."

"I can imagine."

"No, you can't. You really can't."

"Molly. I understand about you and Geddes."

Molly laughed bitterly. "There is no me and Matthew Geddes. There is, however, a Jackie and Matthew Geddes. If you'd dug a bit deeper into my phone, you'd have found the photographic evidence of just _how_ together they both are."

"I'm sorry."

"You keep saying that."

"His name was Oliver. He was an Australian Army Doctor on a training exchange the summer after I moved to Birmingham."

She watched him swallow deeply, hand tugging at the hair at the back of his neck as he stood. Walked a tense circle away from the bench and then returned to her side once he seemed to get himself under control again.

"I'm glad you had somebody."

"Are you? I'm not sure I believe you."

Despite his reasonable tone, passive words and calm demeanour he looked like each word was like swallowing glass. Molly took in his pained expression with considered thought. Her fling with Ollie had been just that; a fling–light, drama free, meaningless– because the man sitting opposite had taught her what it meant to have more with a someone else and what it meant when that sort of deep connection shattered. She'd neither asked for or been capable of anything deeper. Her wounds inflected from the end of her marriage meaning that nothing deeper between them was likely to thrive, even if either of them had been looking for _more._

Molly stood, unsure whether to expand on the subject or not. The expression on his face suggested he wanted to listen, even if he wasn't finding the subject an easy one.

"He asked me out, and I said yes. Wasn't much more complicated than that. Then he went home and it was over. So, if you've been being an arse to Matthew at work, you can stop now."

"As he said as much?"

"No, but we both know you've got a jealous streak. Always did."

"I can't argue that point."

"No, you can't can you."

"I haven't singled him out a such. Been avoiding him, if I'm honest." A faint flush of red stained his cheek bones. "What is they say? Assumption makes an ass our of you and me?"

Despite herself, Molly laughed.

"I thought you are her were off skipping through the daisies hand in hand or some such shit, didn't I, so we're both guilty of that. Everything's different now."

Charles caught her by the elbow, turning her around with gentle urgency.

"Yes. Yes, it is. All this misunderstanding and distance between us. If I had gone after you. If you hadn't left. We could have talked, should have talked."

It was all there in his eyes. Honest and bright. The same determined fire he'd shown her in the ditch in Afghanistan when he told her she could hate him if it would help and in the filthy little concrete bunker when he said she was the last thing he wanted to see.

Later in their relationship, when she'd turned down his first proposal because she'd been full up of insecurities even though she'd was happier than she'd ever been because she was scared that saying yes would change things between them and all that happiness might drain away to nothing. Charles had said, with the same stubborn determination, that he would be asking again and she would say yes eventually. He'd been right but unfortunately her doubts had also been right because life just had a habit of being a bit shit like that sometimes.

"Do you ever wonder if it was all worth? How things might have been different between us if I'd left the Army after my first injury. Seeing Elvis dying. Everything afterwards. How it might have been different?"

"No. I don't wonder about it because I believe everything we do matters and everything we do in our jobs matters even more because we're often dealing with people in crisis."

He looked doubtful and doubting, but she understood that losing Elvis shook his world view, the same way losing him had shook hers.

"What you do matters, Charles don't ever think it doesn't."

He stepped closer, a pleading look in his eyes, and pressed a kiss to her forehead before his arms tentatively moved around her waist. Surprised by her own receptiveness Molly let him hold her, relaxing into the familiar warmth of his chest willingly.

He laid his cheek against hers and sighed.

"That heart of yours...it's amazing, do you know that? To see what we see and still to be able to see the good in it all. Please don't ever loose that.

"I wish I'd managed to do the same for you. To stay the same man I was when we met, but I wasn't strong enough. Elvis…watching his death. His body laid out broken and burnt…" His breath hitched on a sob. "Made me realise what a fucking lie I was. As an Officer, husband, father. It broke me and I wasn't strong enough to put myself back together again without losing you in the process. I'll regret that for the rest of my life."

Suddenly Molly's the one clinging to him like the world might come to an end if he lets go, hands clench around the material of his jacket at his back. In tears suddenly as she shivered in reaction.

"We both made mistakes. Lost each other in the process, but I never blamed you for Elvis or how it hurt you."

He pulled back, pressing his forehead to hers in a heartbreakingly familiar gesture.

"Everything else, after. I don't know how to deal with. I've been so angry at you for so long, but I don't want to do it anymore, but I don't know how to stop either."

"I know." he said, voice cracking as stroked a tear off her cheek with a long, elegant finger.

From within the warmth of his arms she found the bravery to answer. "I'm scared. You being back in my life scares me."

"I am too."

"I know you want me to choose us. I'm scared because I don't know what to do. If it all feel apart again. I don't how I'd pick myself up again."

"I'm scared, if you don't choose us, how I'm going to be without you because I've always held onto the hope that we'd find a way to come back together. There's nothing that scares me more than the thought of losing you."

"We're both trapped, aren't we?"

"Maybe. I've been desperate to try to changing things between without crowding you and had no idea how to start a dialogue, then you came to the house, and it was like a second chance."

"I don't even know why I went. Georgie said so much and it raised this need in me to see how you were living… I don't know what I thought I'd achieve."

"I'll always be grateful that you did, whatever happens next."

Molly pulled away from him abruptly, and he step back to give her space. Worried that he had perhaps overstepped and crowded her again.

"What does happen next?" she asked.

"I don't know, and bloody terrifying me. I want you back, Molly, but I've no idea if that's what you want."

"Ever since Georgie invited herself back into my life, then bogged off to Kenya, I have had everyone yapping at me. I should have done this; we shouldn't have done that. Try this don't try that. As if I don't question myself enough as it is. As much as I want to tell them all to shut up and let me think sometimes, they're all right about one thing. I have been hiding."

"I think we're both guilty of that."

She walked away from him. Pacing a small circle with a tight, worried expression on her face until she turned back around and face him again. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she lifted her eyes to his.

"She scared me, you know, Nan and her accident. She's always seemed so indestructible, somehow." Molly laugh self-depreciatingly. "Bloody naïve way of thinking. Nobody is lives forever, but all the way on the drive over here all I could think of was what if it was worse than they said on the phone. What if she was gone before I got there?"

"It will take more than careless driver to finish off Marge. She'll out live the lot of us."

"It's a nice thought, but we both know it's not true. Life's too short. Smurf, Elvis, Nan–eventually. Living is about loss. You can't run from it or fight it."

"I know."

"She called me pig-headed, when she'd chased you out to get drinks. That I'd let my insecurities get the better of me, you know… after…when I left. She was brutal, but I can't argue her logic."

"I never blamed you for leaving, Molly. It wasn't like I left you with many other choices after Georgie and I tried to get together."

"It seemed like the only choice at the time. Maybe I'm not so sure now."

He took a hesitant step towards her. "What are you trying to say."

"That we can't keep doing what we've been doing. Avoiding things. Running away. Something has to change."

"I know."

"So, alright. Let's talk."

Confusion reflected on his face. "I don't understand."

"I'm saying let's try to talk some more, you know, later."

"Just like that. You want to try?" he said, sounding like a didn't quite believe what he was hearing but then, to be fair, an hour ago she wouldn't have believed what she was saying either.

"Isn't that what you want?"

"More than anything in the world."

"Things can't stay the same. We've both hurt each other by hiding. We need to move passed it or move on."

"Molly, I–"

"I'm not promising anything. I just want to try to keep on talking…" She bit her lip, looking worried. "Without the pressure of expectations."

His smile was tentative, voice cautious but full of optimism. "However, and whatever you need it to be. We'll go at you speed, Molly. I swear."

"Okay. We'd better get back before she sends out a search party. Probably thinks I've killed you and hidden the corpse by now. You always were her favourite Grandson-in-law."

"She shares that with my mother. You always were her favourite, too. When I finally told my parents about what had happened between us, she was furious. Said she didn't understand why you hadn't finished me off and got 2 Section to dig a hole for the body."

"Sounds like your mother."

Outside of Marge's room, after Charles had said goodbye to Marge and collected Sam, Charles handed his mobile to Sam as a distraction for a few minutes and stood by Molly, ready to leave, but struggling to make a move.

"So, I will call you?"

"Yes."

"And you'll answer."

"Yes."

"You'll be, okay with Marge?"

"Be fine. I'm quite looking forward to meeting this Edward. I'm guessing there's a story there to be told."

He seemed hesitant. It was unusual for Molly to see. Even at his most shutdown, when the PTSD had been it worst, he'd managed to hold to his purpose, usually about work, but this air of indecisiveness was new. It was a vulnerability that gave her a strange kind of confidence because he seemed as uncertain as she was, so they at least shared that commonality of feeling.

"You'd better get going. The traffic on the M4 will be a horror."

"Trying to get rid of me?"

"No, well yes, but not like _that._ "

"Okay." He held open his arms. "Can I?"

"Emm, yes."

She moved into them stiffly, unsure, and he pressed a brief kiss to her cheek.

"You will answer, if I call?" he whispered against her ear.

"Yes, or call back. I promise."

Then he stepped back, and the warm of his closeness was gone, but was replaced quickly by Sam's in a goodbye hug.

"Bye, Sam. Be good for your Dad."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm always good."

"Yeah, your Mum has stories that would argue that point."

One final wave, a tentative smile from Charles and wide grin from Sam and they were gone.

Taking a deep breath, Molly let it out in a rush and entered her Nan's room.

"You and him talk?"

"A bit. Quite a lot, actually."

Molly sat down by Marge's bedside.

"And that's good?" Marge asked, making what could have been a statement a clear question.

"We're going to try to keep talking. I don't know if it's going to come to anything, but it's better than what we've been doing. Isn't it?"

Marge held out her hand, taking Molly hand into hers. "You've had your time to run and lick your wounds. It's time to start healin' them now."

Molly rolled her eyes. I left you last weekend, and you were the same old blunt Nan. Now I'm back and you've gone all philosophical or some such shit. Is this because of that knock on your head?"

"Perhaps I've hidden depths."

"Very well hidden."

"Cheeky bleedin'mare."


	15. Chapter 15

**Author Note**

 _Thank you for the feedback, as ever, and sorry for the super slow updating._

 _So, series 4, any hopes for this? I've tried and failed to get enthusiastic about the news on the filming and new characters, etc, on social media. To be honest, since the CJ and G hook up I've been very 'meh' about what might happen next._

 _Looking back on it all, I guess TG fore-shadowed it all with the scene between Brains and Georgie talking about the breakdown of his parents' 'perfect' marriage and that his mum wanted something else. Big old Molly & CJ permanent relationship breakdown parallel hint, I'm guessing? _

_Either way, not my circus or monkeys and totally TG's choice what he does with his characters._

 _On that note, I will put my soap box back in the cupboard._

 **Mood music**

 _What If – Rhys Lewis, Be There – Seafret, All The Things Lost – MS MR, Swan Song (acoustic) – Dua Lipa, Tough – Lewis Calpaldi, The End of Love – Florence + The Machine._

 **Chapter Fifteen**

* * *

 _Unlike simple stress, trauma changes your view of your life and yourself. It shatters your most basic assumptions about yourself and your world — "Life is good," "I'm safe," "People are kind," "I can trust others," "The future is likely to be good" — and replaces them with feelings like "The world is dangerous," "I can't win," "I can't trust other people," or "There's no hope."_

 ** _― Mark Goulston MD_**

* * *

 **From: GLane .org**

 **To: Molly_James**

 **Subject: Re:You & Him**

 **When I first met Elvis, he was everything I never realised I wanted. Perhaps Charlie was everything I should have been trying to find, but there are two issues with that statement. At that point in my life, I wasn't looking to settle down until Elvis crashed, literally, into it and everything I thought I wanted changed, and I never thought of Charlie like that.**

 **When Elvis introduced him as his best mate, I thought, how could two such opposites personalities be so close?**

 **I'll admit there was a lot to like. He was handsome, charming, clever. All good qualities. Perhaps a bit uptight. Mostly he was very, very in love with his girlfriend–you– and I never thought of Charlie in that way.**

 **I'm not a threat to you, Molly. I never really was.**

 **Georgie.**

* * *

Reading from the screen of her mobile phone, Molly's voice faded to silence on the last word of Georgie's email as she put the small, black device down onto the rug at her side. Sat cross legged on the floor by the lit log burner, the light from flickering flames illuminated her face in soft, shifting shadows as she looked across to where Jackie was sitting opposite.

With two untouched plates of pasta and glasses of wine sitting between them, Molly studied her friend's thoughtful expression, impatient for Jackie's opinion.

Jackie reached for her wine, took a long swallow, then placed the glass down. It made a quiet _chink_ noise as it touched the stone hearth. To Molly, everything about Jackie's lack of words on the subject, even the placing down of her glass, were akin to finger nails on a blackboard–viscerally uncomfortable.

"What do you think?"

"I think she's trying to tell you Captain Harte was all she wanted and that you were all Major James want, back then."

"Maybe."

"What did your email say to her?"

"I told her I wanted to know how they started, without apologies or excuses. That I just wanted the facts. I'm not really sure how to take her reply."

"Why?"

"She's not really answered, has she?"

"It depends on what answer you were looking for. To be blunt, yes, she's not detailed how they got to shagging in an officer's billet in Bangladesh, but was that really the sort of detail you wanted?"

Molly's expression was suddenly anguished and Jackie leaned over and put her hand on Molly's knee.

"Shit, Molly. I didn't mean it like that. You know me, I'm too blunt even on a good day. Matt is better at this stuff, and he's a bloke, which says a lot about how crap I am at this."

"It's okay. You've been there for me through all of this, and there's been times when your bluntness was about the only thing that pushed me through."

"I think she's trying to tell you the foundations of your relationship were always solid and she never looked at him as someone to covet or pursue. Question is, is that what you needed to hear?"

"I'm not sure I even know the answer to that." Molly said, frustration in her voice. "Which just makes me sound like a basket case, doesn't it?"

"I remember you saying you wondered if it had all been a lie. How did you put it?"

"Rotten from the start. Wasn't that what I said? God, I was angry back then."

"Yeah, you were. And so conflicted. You turned yourself inside out trying to remember if there was any evidence, they'd been attracted to each other from when you all first met."

"On our first date together, he told me his name and when I laughed, he said was I going to call him Bossman for the rest of our lives. Just like that, it was so simple to him. He was so confident right from the start. I spent most of my time waiting for someone to ask me what hell I was doing by his side like some sort of uninvited guest at a party. He was the source of my confidence and I let him be my self worth as well."

Jacs reached for the bottle of wine, stretching out to top-up Molly's wine glass and then her own before setting the bottle back down again.

"Isn't that what a partnership should be? Support each other, being there for each other?"

"But there was no balance between us, not that I could see it at the time. I let him carry the emotional weight of both of us and he was willing and able to do it because that was the sort of bloke he was. I loved him more than I ever loved anyone else and it all worked for three perfect years. When they got together, I thought it must all have been a lie, what we had, right from the start."

"No one is perfect, Mols, especially from inside of a relationship, and no one who knew you both as a couple would have seen anything less than a successful match."

"When he started to struggle, I started to struggle because he wasn't there to be my reassurance. I recognise that's my fault, because it was my baggage I wasn't handling. When I tried to be his... support, I suppose? To be for him as he had been for me, he shut me out and every doubt I ever had roared to life again, just that little bit louder and more persuasively than before.

"I'm not saying I didn't fight for us. I tried so bloody hard to get him to get help, but he just shut down even more. Kept on leaving on more Tours and coming back even more distant than before.

"At my lowest, when I told him I wanted him to leave me because I wasn't strong enough to walk away, he looked at me like I had two heads or was mad or something. I realised then, despite all the talking and arguments and pleading, none of it had reached him.

"We were both drowning, proper water going over your head, can't see the beach, drowning, and he didn't see any of it. I just felt–"

"Alone."

"Yeah. Alone and lonely in the middle of the marriage with no idea how we'd gotten so lost from each other. It took a long time for us to get to that point, but that was when I really woke up to how bad things had got."

Molly dashed a tear off her cheek and Jackie's heart broke for her all over again.

"Does it at least help to see it written down–that there was nothing to find in your past between them?"

"I believe her, and I'll admit I had been looking for something in our past that wasn't there, but it started somewhere, didn't it?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Ask her again, I suppose."

"Are you going to talk to him about it? You said he knew about you emailing her."

"I don't know. Not yet? Otherwise what's the point?"

"Point of what?"

"Picking at a healed wound, stirring it all back up again. It has to be for something."

"I would say, he's at your proverbially door, not hers, asking for another chance, and in fact ran for the hills to avoid Miss Perfect Eyebrows. Maybe that's all it needs to mean."

Molly's eyes narrowed. "It's not like you to be team Charles James."

"If I'm on any team, it's yours." Jackie shrugged. "My Mum always says: _if its for you, it won't pass you by_. Most annoying saying ever, but it might actually fit in this case."

"Never thought of your mum as a philosopher type." Molly said, thinking of her own impression of Jackie's take-no-nonsense, say-it-like-it-is mother.

"She isn't unless there's prosecco involved."

"Sounds like my Dad, except he talks bollocks when he's sober as well as drunk."

Jackie was reminded of last New Years when Dave had imparted the wisdom that Jackie should get married off and sprogged up before she got too old. Molly's reply had been loud and roundly rude.

"Dave Dawes–never."

They both laughed, because that was the human thing to do–find humour in the hurtful and levity in times of strain.

Molly reached for her pasta while Jackie leaned back on her elbows with a speculative expression.

"So Nan and the new man?"

"That the things, he's not so much new as recycled."

"They dated before?"

"Straight out of school. He joined the Army, and was away on basic and got stationed up North afterwards. She said the distance made things tricky between them. He asked her to marry him but she was worried about leaving her family and London, so they sort of cooled things of for a bit. Then my Nan had her head turned by a flash boy in an even flasher car."

"Your Granddad?"

Molly nodded.

"She apparently broke Edward's heart. Didn't do her much good, either, since my Granddad was a bit of charmer."

"He cheated?"

"Nan said he'd seen half the stock of the M&S knicker department up close and personally, he was so good at pulling women."

"And she didn't throw him out?"

"She did, many times, but she always took him back. Mum said it was like living in a war zone. They were always fighting and making up, but he was apparently a shit husband but a good dad and provider so she forgave him over and over again."

"Your Nan is one of the feistiest women I've ever met. I'm surprised she put up with any of that."

"I know. Puts a different spin on why my Mum puts up with my Dads rubbish, doesn't it? Seems I have a family full of pretty shitty male role models."

"Just as Dr Daddy-Issues likes to point out, and then your husband goes and does that with your mate."

Molly pulled a face and put her half-eaten pasta down on the rug, reaching for her glass of wine.

"I've been thinking a lot about that lately. And I agree, it is Dr Sinclair's favourite topic and he did cheat, emotionally, but we weren't together when he let it get physical."

When Jackie went to protest, Molly held her hand up to silence her rant.

"And I know you disagree with that way of thinking about it, but I've been thinking which is worse? Emotions or physical sex. Then I realise the sex went with the emotions and I get very, very angry, then sad, then bitter and I've been doing that cycle ever since I left. It's exhausting… and I don't have it in me to do it anymore."

"Oh, Molls."

"It's alright, I'm fine talking about it."

"There's nothing 'alright' about any of this. He was a cheating bastard."

Molly sighed. "Be nice if it was really that simple."

"Seems simple enough to me."

"I used to wish I could have my husband back. The one that told me I was the last thing he wanted to see, and meant it. Who used to take the piss out of my awful cooking, but eat it any way. I wanted to be the woman who knew she sucked at cooking but did it anyway, so he could take the piss out of me and I could watch that cocky-little smirk he used to have when he was teasing… but neither of those people exist anymore, and raging and crying after what's lost isn't going to change anything."

"So, what are you going to do?"

"Work out how to either forgive him, or tell him go. There nothing else left to do."

"Tell him to go or let him go?"

"It's all the same thing, isn't it?"

 **ooOOoo**

Early evening the next day found Jackie and Molly running down the sandy track by the mirror bright water of Bracebridge Pool in Sutton Park. They had been going at a steady pace for about forty minutes and Molly found her usual comfort in the rhythmic quality of pounding one foot in front of the other while the music playing through her headset helped to clear her mind except for the necessary concentration need to complete the route. It was satisfying in a wholly soothing and tiring way.

 _Dog Days Are Over_ by Florence and the Machine had just started playing when her phone interrupted the song by switched over to her ring-tone. Trying not to break her rhythm, Molly pulled her phone out from where she had it strapped to her arm and caught Jackie's attention with the movement as they both slowed.

Jackie's expression was questioning as Molly, slowed to a walk.

"Call?"

"It's Charles."

Molly staring at the screen intently but without answering.

"You said you would." Jackie said, her tone firm.

"I know.

"So, answer!" Jackie indicated further down the path with a nod. "I'll see you at the car?"

Molly nodded as she dropped down onto a wooden bench looking out towards the water as the random thought crossed her mind that sitting by water was supposed to be soothing, ironically since she was nervous as hell about taking this particular call.

"Hey, Charles." She said, trying light and untroubled while feeling the direct opposite.

There was the briefest of pauses, as though he hadn't expected a response, before he spoke.

"Hi, sorry. I was expecting it to go to voicemail."

"Yeah, sorry about. I'm out running with Jacs. It took me a sec to get to the phone."

"If it's not a good time, you can call me back. Maybe when you get home?"

Molly run her hand over her face, equal parts frustrated and upset. This was just a phone call. Once upon a time they'd have talked for hours and hours, been heartbroken if they'd missed a call from each other when on tour. Now, it was all so horribly difficult and stilted.

"No, now's fine."

Headphone still in, Molly stared down at the screen of her phone where the only connection to him, apart from his disembodied voice, was his name on the screen and in that moment was filled with an intense feeling of longing to just see his face to make things right, or even just to make this insurmountable awkward conversation possible.

"Hang on one minute, I'm just going to call you back."

"Molly!" There was a protesting tone in the way he said her name, one that suggested he was worried she might not be being entirely honest when she said she was going to call him back.

"I'm just going to Facetime you back, okay?"

"Right, okay." He said with the same doubting, but she hung up before he had a chance to argue, clicking onto the video calling option and waiting while it burred gently with a ringing tone as she settled herself more comfortably on the wooden bench.

His face filled the screen seconds later, worried eyes and all. Molly took in his expression while her own was appearing on his screen mirroring the same sentiments. To Charles she looked heartbreakingly unsure and he just wanted to scoop her up and tell her everything was going to be okay even though he wasn't sure of that himself.

"Hey."

"Hi."

They both said with practically perfect and clashing timing followed by two awkwardly matching, polite laughs before lapsing into silence as they stared at each other.

"Sorry, you first." Charles said, running a nervous hand through his hair.

"It's fine. What were you going to say?"

"Just that this is going to put a hole in your data. I could have called you."

"Doesn't matter."

"Yes? Well, okay then."

Molly's eyes dart around the view of him on the screen. He was sat at a desk in, she assumed, his office at barracks, if the wood panelled and Army beige walls behind his head were in anyway a clue. His expression was carefully neutral, eyes guarded.

"You still at work? Bit late isn't it?" Molly asked.

She could hear it in her own voice. The forced easy breezy tone she was faking while desperately struggling to know what the hell to say. What were the rules in this situation? The parameters for this new way of the talking after so long. It was all just so desperately difficult.

"I had stuff to finish off so got stuck into it all."

And a ready meal for one wasn't exactly all that appealing, was what Charles wanted to say and that doing most things for one seemed a bit pointless, these days, but he didn't say any of it, because he didn't want to come across as pathetically needy or as if he was trying to guilt trip Molly in anyway. To him, it was a miracle that she had answered the call at all, and he was desperate to make sure he didn't waste his first chance to talk to her again.

He needed to be careful. Be circumspect and respectful. This call was the first glimmer of hope that he'd allowed himself to feel that Molly might be willing to try talking to him again. After their yearlong separation, this chance was like an oasis to a dying man in a desert and he would not let himself fuck it up.

"Where are you right now? Seems a bit more appealing than an empty office block in barracks. Very green."

"Sutton Park." Molly cast her phone around so he could see the view. "It's nice place to run in when the weathers behaving."

"Do you go there often?"

"We run at a couple of different places. This one is my favourite, I think. Normally come here on a Friday after work, depending on what shifts I'm doing."

"It looks lovely."

"Yes it, is."

"Very green."

"I think you said that already." Molly said, without meaning to be hurtful, but when his brows drew together and his lips thinned, she realised she had caused hurt and felt like shit for doing it. It wasn't only his fault that this conversation was clumsy as hell. They were both floundering.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap or correct you."

"You didn't."

"I did. Please understand, I'm struggling with this too. I feel like I don't know _how_ to speak to you anymore. I don't mean to be hurtful by saying that. It's just the truth."

"I know. I feel the same."

"I guess all I can ask is what is it that you want out of this, Charles?"

"A chance. Any chance to build some sort of relationship with you again."

"What if I can't?"

He looked down and away from the screen, took a breath then turned his gaze back to Molly. "I'm not sure. I've not really thought that far ahead. That you answered this call at all has made my week."

"Charles–"

"Perhaps I should ask what do you want?"

"To move on."

"Do you mean move on from us?"

"Yes–no… I don't know." She said in a confused rush. "I mean I want to move on from the way the end of us left me feeling. Like I'm still stuck with the pain of the weight of it all."

"You want to be able to let it go?"

"Yes."

"I want that too…."

"But you want more than that."

"Yes, exactly, I'm scared that you don't feel the same way. Do you?"

"I don't want to hurt you, Charles, and I can see how much this means to you, but I honest don't know."

"That's fair." He said, looking down at his desk.

"You hurt me so much."

When he raised his eyes to hers again, they were red rimmed, sore looking with held in tears.

"I know." he said, his voice choked with emotion. "I don't have the words to explain how eternally sorry I will always be for that."

They fell into silence for several seconds, each watching the other screen to screen, talking without words. It was Charles who ended it, seeing that Molly was struggling.

"What do we do now?"

"Damned if I know." Molly said, tucking her hair behind her ears, and trying to smile for him to cut through the heaviness between them. "Perhaps we need some sort of referee."

"I'd vote for you Nan."

"I bet that you would, she's always been pro you."

"I need somebody on my side."

"She'd probably just lock us in a room and tell us to get own with it. Shout it or shag it out."

"I think we already did that." Charles said, and then looked momentarily horrified at his uncensored words. "I mean, shit–Molly I didn't mean to say that."

The look on his face. The blunt truth in his words. The absurdity of struggling to just talk to a man who'd once been the solid centre of her world. It all struck Molly like lightening, and she did the only thing she could other than cry. She laughed, inappropriately loudly and with real feeling and it was a relief for the few seconds that she managed to hold onto the warmth and positivity of the feeling in the middle of so much confusion and conflict.

Charles' expression shifted from horrified to confused to amused as he enjoyed Molly moment of humour, even if it was at his expense on most levels.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh. Your face, and what you said, is so bloody true. The whole situation is ridiculous. We're being ridiculous. I just couldn't help it. Forgive me."

From his smile, she knew she was forgiven, but his silence confused her.

"Charles?"

"God, but I've missed you. I don't want you to say it back. It's just in all the ways we went wrong with each other: my lies were what broke us in the end. To myself, you. I told myself, if you ever gave me the chance to speak to you again. I'd be nothing but honest. No matter how hard. Listening to you laugh at my ridiculousness… see you smiling. It's lovely. You don't ever need to hide your reactions from me, Molly. I'd welcome it all."

"We were both guilty of lying at the end. Perhaps we both need a dose of honesty."

"I'm not so sure of your guilt."

"I am. In all sorts of ways."

"Okay. Maybe we need to agree to disagree on that one for now."

"So, what do we do now?" Molly asked, unconsciously repeating his earlier question.

"Keep talking?"

He posed what should have been a statement as a question and Molly felt the prickle of tears at the back of her eyes because the weight of the emotion in those words and his dark, earnest eyes, scared her as much as it spoke to her own loneliness. Both left her feeling vulnerable and made her want to bolt at the same time as need to stay here, sitting on this bench to hear what he had to say. As conflicted as it all left her feeling, she was motivated to want to see where they could go with this.

Attempting to hide her vulnerability, Molly reached for humour like armour.

"Talking, sound like a plan. Since we're lacking your manky feet and a med tent to get things started, I think we might need some safe topics. Any ideas?"

"How about I bore you why I'm working late on budgets and you can tell me about your least and most favourite patients and hospital politics." He said with a gentle smile.

Molly returned the smile and sat back further on the bench, feeling some of her earlier tension relax as she stretched out the muscles in her back.

"Come on them, why are you slaving away when the rest of your unit seems to have done the sensible things and headed home?"

 **ooOOoo**

Later that night, at home in bed. Molly opened her laptop and tapped out a reply to Georgie.

* * *

 **From: Molly_James**

 **To: GLane .org**

 **Subject: Re Re :You & Him**

 **That was back then and things changed between you, later. I need to know why.**

 **Molly**

* * *

Answering the phone to Charles and talking to him had been the start of something for Molly. Sending this email was, she hoped, the end of something else.


	16. Chapter 16

**Mood music**

 _101 Vultures – Alex Winston, Lost – Dermot Kennedy, What Have I Done – Dermot Kennedy, Days Gone Quiet – Lewis Capaldi, Naked – James Arthur, If The World Was Ending (feat. Julia Michaels) – JP Saxe_

 **Chapter Sixteen**

* * *

 _Some people's lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That's what trauma does. It interrupts the plot. You can't process it because it doesn't fit with what came before or what comes afterward. A friend of mine, a soldier, put it this way. In most of our lives, most of the time, you have a sense of what is to come. There is a steady narrative, a feeling of "lights, camera, action" when big events are imminent. But trauma isn't like that. It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it._ _ **― Jessica Stern**_

* * *

Thomas 'Tommo' Taylor wasn't having the best of days, Molly observed to the Ward Sister, Lieutenant Hargreaves, during the morning staff meeting. His rehab following his operations wasn't going as well as the team of health care professionals looking after him had hoped, and the disappointment and strain was starting show on the young Private who was a bit of a secret favourite with Molly.

Unfailingly polite to the staff as a fault, the target for his low moods tended to be directed towards his young wife, Nicole, and other family members when they visited. That morning's outburst involved snapping that Nicole needed to leave while Molly changed the dressing around his amputation sight on his right shoulder. Nicole had been settled by his bedside bouncing their daughter on her knee, as she was most mornings. She'd said she didn't mind staying. His reply, virtually snarled, was that _he_ did mind, and had sent his wife into retreat with the baby out of the Ward with bravely hidden tears in her eyes.

Molly had tried to speak to him about it as gently as possible, and he responded to her with brutal honesty– that he couldn't stand to look at his own mutilated body. Having his wife see him, like that–damaged, broken, less of a man than he had been– was more than he could stand. His quietly spoken words had broken Molly's heart.

They were both so young, barely twenty and married straight out of school and Basic Training with a young baby, and Tommo's injury was pulling them both apart.

The Lieutenant noted Molly's comments down, professional to a fault, and the meeting moved on to discuss this next topic. Done, being dealt with quietly an inefficiently by the medical team, but the matter worried at Molly more than she knew that it should for the rest of the morning.

 **ooOOoo**

Sitting with Jackie while they grabbed a quick lunch, Molly was completely unaware that that worry was written clearly on her face for her friend to read.

"Come on then, what's going on with your face?" Jacs asked with a cheeky grin on her face as she took another bite of her sandwich.

Molly, half way through a bowl of veg soup which, for hospital canteen food, actually wasn't half bad, raised her eyes to Jacs'.

"What are you on about you daft cow? All looked fine when I put some slap on in the mirror this morning." Molly's hand touched her face as though checking for something missing. "S'all still there as far as I can tell."

"Very funny. You're right, it's all there including that look you get when you're worrying about something."

"I have a look?"

Jacs lips set in a straight line, teasing turning serious all of a sudden.

"As much as I enjoy your Molly-brand banter–" Jacs raised in wrist to Molly to display her watch "–we only get half an hour, so out with it!"

"It's that patient and his wife."

"The couple with the cute as a button toddler? She's young enough to have starred on _Teen Mum_?"

Molly pulled a face at Jacs' attempt at humour. While nicely meant, rather than being judgmental, Molly herself had been the product of a teen pregnancy, and found the subject matter a little too close to home. Nicole was potentially looking at living her mother's younger life, except with a husband with a life changing injury. Their little girl, Carley, could be the next generation of Molly or Jade or Izzy…

Molly jerked out thoughts of her sisters as Jackie stamped her fingers right in front of Molly's face, rudely but highly effectively snapping her back to the subject they had been discussing.

"You back with me, Molls? This is Private Taylor you're talking about?"

"They had another argument in the ward this morning."

"You mean full on shouting fight?"

"No, it was worse than that. Quiet, kind of nasty. He sent her out of the room when he was having his dressings changed. Said he couldn't stand looking at himself, so her seeing him was worse. He lashed out, she left." Molly sat back in her seat; soup forgotten. "She looked so hurt."

"They both must be hurting. He's suffered a major lose that's going to impact on both their lives. I'm not saying it's fair that he's lashing out, but it's horribly normal. You know how it goes."

"You know they met at school? Been together since they were fifteen. Proper Romeo and Juliet story. Her family's got money, his not so much, but he's smart. Wanted to go to Uni and go for Officer training, but she got pregnant–total accident– and her family, well they weren't supportive."

"Sounds like a tough start."

"He stepped up. Moved her in with his family, joined up, got married. Did it all right, made a little family. Second tour in Syria and an I.E.D. and it's all falling apart for them. Breaks my heart."

"And the fact that he reminds you a bit of Smurf has nothing at all to do with how invested you are in them?"

"Knew I was making a mistake telling you that." Molly said, rolling her eyes her best friend. "The just make me think. Nicole, the baby, so young and struggling. It could have been me if I'd followed my parents' example or if things with Smurf had been different."

"He's suffered a traumatic injury. Whole life thrown to shit. She been left in the remains and probably doesn't know where to start to begin picking up the pieces. Has somebody talked to them about the support that's available?"

"Of course, I spoke to Nicole myself, but I don't think much of it went in. She looked overwhelmed. They were so close when he first came in. Right there for each other through every operation. Now he's recovering, things should be easier and he's pushing her away. She looks so bewildered, scared. I just want to help."

Jackie to a moment to consider her next words, understanding Molly's need to help was part of who she was to the core, but wanting to provide a gentle warning.

"You're good at your job because you care, but you have to be careful about getting too attached. You know that, right? You help by doing your job, making sure the support for them both is there."

Molly run a hand through her hair which was immaculate as always, dark strands plaited and rolled under and pinned to her head and grimaced at her friend's concern expression.

"Don't get in-fucking-volved. Is that what you're saying?" Jackie nodded. "You're not the first person to warn me about it."

"Who?"

"Charles. First tour."

"Brutally put but true. He might not be my favourite person, and a bit of shit husband, but he was a good Captain. You need to think about what we're both saying."

"I know, it's just hard, watching them struggle and maybe failing. You and I both know his recovery is all about finding and reaching for positive future, and family plays such an important part of it all."

"It's hard, but you can't take the weight of it all for them, you can only be there when they need you. You're a good nurse. You have their back. It's all you can do. If you think she didn't take in the information first time, find a quiet moment and go through it with her again. Doing stuff like that, that's how you help."

"I'm trying to keep telling myself that." Molly said, chewing her lip, worry still evident.

"You could always phone up MTV and see if they are looking for new cast members." Jacs said, deadpan in her humour.

"Don't be a bitch." Molly scolded, shoving Jackie on the shoulder reprovingly. So called 'funeral humour' was a common theme between them and other colleagues. Seeing the things they did, the good and the bad, sometimes it was needed to provide a means of _coping._ With Jackie's change of topic, Molly's mood settled.

"Talking about family, was that your mother ranting on the phone this morning before I went into the shower?"

Molly sighed, and reached for the remains of her mug of tea. "My Dad, of course. Dave Dawes wanker extraordinaire. The school want her to do some college course, some kind of career progression. He's says they can't afford it. She pointed out if he got a job, even part time, they could afford it."

"What did he say to that?"

"That he's busy looking after the kids while she's working. To be fair, he has stepped up with that. She pointed out that Martin will be starting school soon, so that excuse was out the window." Molly's expression showed her annoyance.

"Go on, I can see from your face that a Dave Dawes magic moment occurred."

"He suggested they have another baby."

"And that can't have ended well."

"No, he's on the sofa apparently and isn't getting back into their bedroom until he's got a vasectomy booked and some sort of plan about a job sorted out. She threatening to put him out, and I actually think she might be serious this time. I'm worried."

"Worried? I'd have thought you'd be on your Mum's cheering squad on this one."

"I am, and there's no doubt he's being a dickhead as usual…" She trailed off, back to chewing her lip again. "I've just been thinking… all the stuff with Private Taylor and his wife, Smurf and his brother dying, Charles and Elvis, Charles and me, it's all got the same cause, ain't it?"

"You've lost me, sorry. My brain is struggling to connect your Dads continuing need to repopulate Lewisham as a one-man effort, with the rest."

Molly snorted with laughter.

"Fear, he frightened. Of working again and failing at it. Of my mum out growing him and leaving, it's all fear. Stopping him talking to her about it like a grownup for _once_ , making Tommo push his wife away, Smurf, his brother, all his issues." Molly took a big breath. " _Me_ and _him._ It's all about fear."

Jacs scooted her chair closer, and put her arm around Molly. "You okay?"

Molly found a smile for her friend and returned the hug. "I'm sorry, getting a bit deep and dark for a wet Wednesday in Birmingham, aren't I?"

"Not looking forward to the next appointment with Dr Day-issues" Jacs asked, guessing the root cause of Molly's worries.

"Yeah. Friday. I know all the introspection and talking is necessary and good and that, it just leaves me so shredded afterwards. My Mum wants me to stay for the weekend to support her. It's gonna be bloody awful but I said would drive up straight after."

"That's a lot to take on in one day. You could always say no, that you're busy or something, or postpone it for a bit."

Molly shook her head.

"I can't, I already said I would, she needs some support. My Nans no help. She' stoking the bloody argument instead of getting them to talk about it, enjoying seeing my Dad with his head in a noose of his own making.

"I need to be there but I'm dreading it for other reasons–" Molly shook her head at Jackie in a very pointed way that utterly confused Jackie "– and I know that mostly a problem of my own making, before you tell me off."

"Cause of your Dad?" Molly shook her head again. "You've lost me."

Molly's eyes widened realising the Jackie had missed what she was really trying to avoid. In the manner of someone confessing to stealing the last cookie to an annoyed parent, Molly sucked in a big sigh before she spoke again.

"My gran knows that Charles and I are talking again, and there is no way she hasn't talked about it to my Mum. Once she finished ranting and raving about my Dad, she's gonna have questions. It's going to bring up stuff I made clear was to be left buried. They still don't know why we split up and she's got her own shit to worry about."

Jacs expression was chiding. "Come on, Molly."

"Don't look at me like that. I know I'm making stupid excuses because I don't want to talk about Charles and me, and I know you know it."

"I may have an opinion, but it's not my job as your official BFF to force it on you. She's your mum, you need to decided what you want her to know, or not. If it was my Mum, I want her to know. If only to hear her threaten to cut off his balls and wear them as earrings."

Molly giggled at Jacs' silliness in the face of a heavy conversation.

"Things with Charles are still, I don't know, hard to explain, let's say, and I appreciate what you saying about pushing me and that. But the thing is… you are right."

"Go me. Jackie is right for once." Jacs said, grinning.

"Yeah, don't let your head get too big about it. Won't happen again soon."

 **ooOOoo**

Later the same week, Molly was back on Ward Ten and back to worrying about the young couple. When Molly enter his side room to take Tommo's OBS, there was an atmosphere stifling in its intensity and she caught the snapped end of a conversation without hearing the words. Their body language said enough. Tommo was sat in profile to his wife, staring out towards the room window, jaw tight, eyes hard.

Nicole, head bent, pinned a pained smile to her face before turning to Molly and said, "Hi Nurse James, I'm just going to leave you to it. Be back in a bit." Then left the room at a fast walk, the movement jerky and ungraceful as though she was trying to stop herself from outright running.

As she came to the side of his bed, Tommo extended his arm without looking at Molly directly, well versed in the routine of the nurses checking and noting various items for nursing observations. Molly slipped the blood pressure cuff on his arm and watched the small screen on the monitor as the cuff inflated, while side eying Tommo.

She took his temperature with the same lack of comment and watched as Tommo slowly relaxed back into his bed– remaining hand unclenching, the stubborn tilt of his head, turned away from where his wife had been sitting beside his bed, unbending. As though her removal was a de-stressor for the young Private.

"You alright?" Molly asked carefully when he finally turned to face her.

"Her hovering and fussing. I can't stand it. I just need some space to deal, she can't seem to see that. I snapped at her…I shouldn't have, I know."

Molly pocketed the pen she was using to update his chart, pointed to the empty chair by his bed and sat down when he nodded in response.

"Are you asking for my opinion?"

"Every other bastard that comes in here, medical personnel or otherwise, seems to have an opinion, why not you?" he replied sarcastically. Molly's silent lifting of her eyebrows had him backing down quickly. "Sorry, Corporal."

"You're pushing away the person that you're gonna want right by your side to help you to heal."

"Maybe I don't want her there. Maybe she'd be better without me." he snapped; eyes hostile.

"You honestly think she thinks like that? Wants that? Seems to me she's been right by your side since you got here."

Just like that, he deflated, anger dampened like water thrown over a naked flame.

"No…maybe, that's the problem. Maybe she should be looking after herself and cutting me loose."

"You don't mean that, not really."

"Yeah? Don't I? Not like I've got much of a future to offer her now, do I?"

"Have you tried telling her that?" His eyes drop to the bed clothes folded neatly across his lap. No, of course not."

"Maybe you need to."

"Easy as that, ehh? You think I haven't thought about that? I've all this shit going around in my head until it feels like I'm going to burst, but I can't _just_ talk to my wife because I don't know _how_ to speak to her anymore."

"Maybe you need to speak to somebody else about–"

He cut Molly off, making an angry sighing noise. "I've had the shrink talk, and they'll be more of the same when they boot me out of here to rehab them home. It didn't help... won't help."

He stared directly at Molly with tear rimmed eyes.

"I went to work one day knowing who I was, with mates, home life, plans for the future and woke up with a few less mates and missing parts of me with no idea what the means for the rest of my life. How am I supposed to speak to a stranger about that? How's it supposed to help anything when I don't even recognise myself anymore."

"I'm not trying to minimise the shit you're going to have to deal with, but when you're ready, it will help. Bottling it up, trying to deal with it yourself. It won't work. It's all got to come out in the end."

His expression was an ugly sneer, and seemed to be particularly brutal on the face of such a young man.

"Seems to me you've got all your limbs attached just fine, so I'm not sure why you'd be such an expert." He replied with venom.

"There's different kinds of losses, Private. I've seen plenty of that. I've also seen what happens when trauma comes into a marriage and how quickly things unravel when the talking stops."

Molly's gaze was direct, honest. Her large green eyes hiding nothing. She's didn't provide details, because it really wasn't necessary to the point she was making.

"You're gonna need to speak to someone, at some point, and Nicole is struggling just as much as you are for all the same and a hundred and one different reasons."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have–"

"You're allowed to be angry, Tommo. It's normal, human response to what you're going through. Please, just think about what I'm saying." Molly said, with a gentle smile. "You need anything, water, cuppa maybe?"

He shook his head and watched as Molly stood and clipped his chart back into the holder on the bed.

"You married, Corporal?"

"Yes. Three, nearly four years." Molly replied, noticing that he was studying her ringless left hand. "Separated for the last twelve months."

"The truth is want happened to you has changed everything for you. What you've lost, you can't get back. That doesn't mean you need to lose anything else because of it."

A moment of understanding passed between them, and he nodded as Molly moved to the door.

 **ooOOoo**

Despite Molly's strong desired for the opposite to be true, Friday rolled around and found Molly back in front of Dr Sinclair.

Initial pleasantries covered, Molly updated the Doctor on recent developments and readied herself for the intellectually interrogation to begin.

"Obviously a lot has happened since we last spoke."

"We've talked, which I think is a positive change?" Molly said, unconsciously posing her answer as a question.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

"The only person who can decide if talking to your husband is a positive or not is you, surely? You posed it as a question to me. What do you think?"

"Oh, sorry. I didn't even notice. It's progress, maybe?"

"You don't sound sure? When we spoke last you said you felt you were stuck after the end of your relationship."

"Yes, I remember."

"So, what caused the changed? My understanding was that you had not spoken at all for nearly a year until recently."

"Meeting, her– Georgie– again dragged a lot of things back up that I thought I'd finished with. You know, put away. Except, I realised I hadn't real dealt with it. Avoiding stuff isn't really deal with it, I guess."

"It's one coping strategy."

"When I left, I had this very clear idea of what was happening, about them being together. I wanted to leave them to it, sort of. And I told myself I was moving on. Except I wasn't…

"I think if they had made a go of it, and I'd met up with them or heard about them, I'd have told myself. Fine, that's their life and this is mine. I'm not saying it wouldn't have hurt like hell or been difficult to hear about, but I think I'd have worked at getting on with my life and left them to theirs. That's what my mindset has been. Don't want to know, don't tell."

"All of that was based on them being together. Now I know it didn't work out, and that Charles regretted what happened. It's thrown everything back up in the air again."

"How do you feel about that?"

"Honestly? Confused, nervous… a bit scared of what it means. He wants us to try again, that's not a something I'd ever consider because it was never an option.

"I told myself, when I found out about the texting and I suppose what you might call non-physical cheating, that we were failing, it was just a symptom of things ending. When we did finish things, he went on to pursue Georgie and they slept with each other, and there was part of me that thought– there you are, it was always gonna end, and now it has, so you've better get on with it and get over yourself.

"Now he's telling me that he didn't want to end things, and it all happened because we got so distant from each other and stop. That that was his fault. I always looked on it as why we fell apart, because he was looking for something new. Like she was my improved replacement or something."

"All the reasons are different but I still feel the same. Betrayed and guilty with a whole shopping list of insecurities. I've got him telling me he loves me, and her telling me it wasn't the way I thought it was between them. It's a mess."

"You've been in contact again with Georgie?"

"Yes. I wanted to get her side of things. I'm not sure I even know why. I have Charles telling me all the right things. He loves me, wants to try again, wants to go at my speed, tell me anything I need to know but I can't shake these feeling of anxiety that he's hiding something.

"Him texting her back when it was all going to hell in a handbasket came so out of blue… Before it happened, I would have staked my life on him not being that type of guy. Even his ex-wife said the same thing. Despite everything he's saying, I'm struggling to trust it because I don't trust my own instincts about him anymore, if I'm honest."

"Talking to her about how they got together has helped me realise that neither of them were looking for, or feeling things they shouldn't have before Elvis died. Charles said the same thing, but Georgie has got me believing he's telling the truth, believe it or not. Which helped, because I can at least tell myself it wasn't all a lie from the start. I thought that for a very long time."

"It's sounds like speaking to Georgie has challenged your fundamental beliefs, if you will, about how your marriage ended."

Molly chewed on her lip, understanding what Dr Sinclair was suggesting but not completely agreeing with her suggestion.

"Yes and no. I don't see how we fell apart any differently, but why is different. We had a strong relationship until Elvis died and Charles started struggling as the PTSD took hold of him." Molly sat up straighter, her expression earnest with a need to clarify her understanding as much for her own good as to assist Dr Sinclair. "I'm not sure I'm explaining this well."

"I thought things got difficult between us and he went looking for a better option. Like, if the PTSD hadn't happened thing between us were going to flounder eventually anyway because I thought he found me lacking for various reasons.

"Stupid analogy thingy. If he was stood on a cliff waiting to jump, in my head, I was standing waiting to catch him, or save him or whatever, but Georgie was standing their waiting as well… and he chose to jump towards her not me. Do you see what I mean?" Molly asked, her confidence wavering seconds later. "Sorry, it's a silly example."

"No, it's not. I understand what you are saying."

Molly, blew out a breath. "Okay, glad I'm making sense to somebody for once."

"And you don't see it that way anymore?"

"No, because the PTSD was never about me. I mean it effected things between me and Charles, in terrible ways, but it was never my fault or my responsibility to fix, or fail to fix. I tried to fix him, I suppose, and failed again and again and it just made me feel shit about myself, my marriage like I was failing us both. My insecurities just made everything hundred times worse."

"But I've realised that you can't save someone from themselves. Charles had to want help. He said as much himself. Admitted that he'd had to hit rock bottom, to realise how wrong things had got. Course by then it was all too late.

"So, if I go back to the dumb cliff jumping thing. He should have taken a step back from the edge himself, not looked towards Georgie or me."

"That is quite a shift in your view of things."

"I used to think the worst thing of all was finding out that they'd finally made things physical and…well find out the way I found out made it feel worse. Now, I suppose, I don't blame him for things getting physical, because we weren't together. We both ended things. How quickly things moved along between them still stings, but that's another issue.

"Is it crass to say, it would have been easier if everything had been going okay between us and he'd slept with her? It would have been just as hurtful and devasting, but clearer cut somehow.

"I can say I don't feel the same way about them getting together in Bangladesh, but also can't let go of the fact he, by his own admission, pursued Georgie before we came to an end.

"He had an affair; it just wasn't a clear cut as a physical affair from the start would have been."

"What you're describing is an emotional affair and they are often symptomatic of something going wrong in a marriage when partners are suffering a sense of isolation or disconnection from their partners."

"Text book definition of PTSD, isn't it? Disconnection, isolation. I can see why it might have happened, I'm just not sure how to move passed it. He here saying all the right things, being open about everything that happened with him and George an believe me, I've not made it easy for him to get the point of being able to tell me this stuff. Georgie's even confirmed most of what he said, so I know he's not lying but I'm still struggling with it."

"If he's being open an honest about things, that's a strong start."

"So, I'm doing something right then."

"You started a dialogue with him, try to keep it going. If you feel you need support, you both might benefit from therapy together. I can suggest some names if you decide to pursue that.

"If I can leave you with one thought to take away it's that you need to understand why the affair happened, rather than run away from the reasons. You both need to gain insights into what went wrong to be able to move past it.

 **ooOOoo**

Molly should have been straight on the road the road to Lewisham after her appointment, but found herself reluctant to set out and struggling to shake off a sort of emotionally chewed up and spat out feeling she' tried to explain to Jackie earlier in the week.

Needing a breather before head towards the shit storm that was brewing in her parents' house, Molly drove the car into the centre of town with a few to pottering around the shops and maybe to find a baby gift for Rebecca whose due date was fast approaching.

Wondering the shops, her brain kept going around on the subject of Charles and Georgie's email. Tommo and Nicole, her parents and their discord. Around and around until she just wanted to dump it all into some sort of mental box, and slam the lid. Not that would have help any, but her biggest shouting realisation was that she wanted to talk to somebody about it, and once upon a time that person would have been Charles.

She ended up in a coffee shop in _The Squares_ and sat herself down in front of a large mug of tea and a muffin to brood some more and to try for a bit of a mental re-set.

Camberley to Guildford or Camberley to Pirbright were so temptingly close and talking to him on the phone semi regularly was a dangerously tempting reminder that she had started to let herself relax just a bit more into each conversation. Each step letting him in just a little and at the same time ringing warning bells of what she was risking by doing so.

Even at her worst moments after they'd finished things, she'd always missed him. Experienced cutting moments when something happened in her day and she'd thought, for a split second, I must tell Charles this or that, then remembered, he wasn't that person to her anymore. Like a ghost in every room she entered, the memory of what they'd had lingered and hurt.

She supposed she was having one of those moment now, where the memory of having his broad shoulder to lean against and off load her day to lingered in the same way. Except, she knew if she asked, he'd provide that willingly now. She was the one now unwilling to ask, despite the way the feelings of safety and support he'd once provided tempted her to get back into her car and drive.

Half way through her drink, she decided to indulge herself in a half way sort of manner. Reasoning that he'd be expecting to call her tonight anyway, and calling him now would be easier than trying to find a secretive way to speak to her husband under her parent's roof.

Head phones in, she Facetimed his mobile and was greeted by his cautiously smiling face filling the screen with the back drop of his office in barracks.

"Hey you, this is a nice surprising. Thought I'd be calling you later tonight."

"Yeah, I know. Are you okay to talk now?"

"Sure. Bit of a different back drop to your normal calls," he teased gently, referring to the fact she had got into the habit of calling him from Sutton Park, usually after she'd finished jogging after work or in the morning before, depending on her shifts.

"No Molly in nature today. I'm actually on my way to London. Had an appointment and stopped for a cuppa before heading out to my parents. Thought it might be easier to call now. Got a bit a drama going down with them."

She shrugged in a very Molly _what are you going to do about it_ sort of a way, but Charles could see the stress in her expression.

"Everything okay?"

"Same shit, different day. My Mum's kicking off at my Dad. It's fine. Usual drama."

"Want to talk about it?" Charles asked, pushed gently but cautious as he always was during these conversations, working always to avoid overstepping or asking for more than Molly was willing to give. Grateful, as he was, that she was willing to give him any time at all.

Truth be told, he rather missed seeing Molly sitting on the bench in the park with trees and lake in the background instead of the coffee shop that showed behind her on his screen. To see her face, sometimes flushed from running, hair blowing in a breeze, he would let himself imagine it was like she was calling him from on tour, when conversation had been so easy for them before it all went to shit.

Charles knew it was all a bit fanciful and dangerous. They weren't that to each other anymore, and their conversations were more about a careful exchange were both held back just enough to avoid falling into difficult topics. He had to be cautious. What he was trying to build on where very fragile foundations.

"No, it's fine."

"Okay. Look, Sam emailed last night. You know it's my mother's birthday in a few weeks?"

"They're going down to the holiday house, aren't? With Sam."

"Yep." He paused. "Look, I don't want to put you on the spot or anything but Sam asked if you were going, and… well, I said I'd ask." he said, the last few words in a bit of rush. "No expectations of course."

"Your mum already, asked. I told her no. With my parents and that…" Molly waved her hand as though to illustrate the difficulty in the request. "I'm gonna be needed at home."

Her eyes dropped from his, as though she was gathering her thoughts. When she lifted her head to look at him again, her expression was a curious mix of determined and apologetic.

"You know how much I love your Mum, and Sam, spending time with them… it's just… I don't think I'm ready to be doing… family stuff."

With me. Charles added silently to himself with sinking disappointment.

"No, no of course not, it was just a thought I had." he said quickly, sounding almost out of breath. "Well you know, when Sammie _asked_ … I just thought…"

"I'm not ready for that yet, Charles." she said quietly.

They studied each other in silence for a few moments.

Letting out a nervous breath, Charles forced himself to calm the hell down. "I promised you that this would always be at your pace, Molly. I meant that."

"Thank you."

"You look tired." Charles said, voice soft. "Work busy?"

"Been a long week." Molly said, relaxing a shade and grateful that he turned the conversation to a safer topic than family gatherings and family expectations. She had enough of those on her plate already with his family and their expectations adding to the stress.

"Want talk about that?"

Molly smiled, "Yeah, I would."

 **ooOOoo**

They talked for maybe a half an hour as Molly off loaded about work, in particular one young couple she was looking after and worried about, and gripes about course work and nightshift. Hungry for every word, Charles listened. When she said she needed to go and get on the road or risk getting stuck in traffic, he said goodbye with regrets and settled back into the silence of his office when she hung up the call.

Having Molly instigating a call to him had a been a nice surprise. Giving him small boast of confidence that she wanted to speak to him as much as he always did. It was a tiny sign, but promising.

Recognising the backdrop to her call as a coffee shop in Camberley that he knew well, had been a bit of a kick in balls. To have her so near and yet not to be invited to join her in person was jarring. He comforted himself by holding onto the thought of small wins and the need for slow steps. That she was speaking to him at all was a miracle and more than he deserved.

If Molly needed to go slow, he would give her that–what she needed, _always._


	17. Chapter 17

**Mood music**

 _Red Earth & Pouring Rain – Bear's Den, Call It Love – Archer, Say Too Much – Sarah Proctor, I don't Want to Change You – Damien Rice, Storm – Lifehouse._

 **Chapter Seventeen**

* * *

 _To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous._ _ **― Elizabeth Gilbert**_

* * *

.

.

.

The first night of Molly's stay in London was a night of pizza, gins and long overdue confessions to her mother. What she had needed to say about her reasons for walking away from her marriage and the way she'd ruthlessly shutdown any further discussion on the subject in the aftermath had come easily enough in the end. Belinda had listened in the most blessedly non-judgemental way possible and Molly have felt better afterwards. Lighter for finally taking the proverbial lid off a box which had kept a taboo and deeply painful subject locked away for too long a time. Guilt was a nasty, corrosive sort of emotion, and taking this step had lessoned the feeling immeasurably.

Molly second night, but for witnessing a small verbal skirmish between her parents on the doorstep involving raised voices and slamming doors, was peaceful enough. It had been Molly's turn to listen to her mother's frustrations over the situation with her Dad and his inability _hear_ what Belinda was trying to say which has resulted in her chucking him out until, in her words, 'he grew up and stepped up'. She'd parted company with her mother her bedroom door with a hug and thanks for being around to listen.

Molly's sleep was disturbed by the chime of her email alert pinging on her phone sometime after two in the morning as her phone lit up the darkness of her childhood bedroom jarringly.

Georgie had replied, finally.

 ** _From: GLane .org_**

 ** _To: Molly_James_**

 ** _Subject: Re re: You & Him_**

 ** _I'm not going to try to pretend that I understand why you want to know this stuff. If it had been you and Elvis, I'm pretty sure I'd want to know as little as possible but you asked, and I owe you an answer._**

 ** _That afternoon I got blown up. I was standing in an office doing my job one minute, next I was semiconscious on a stretcher with Charlie holding my hand saying I was going to be alright. In all that panic he was the only thing I could focus on. I don't know if I can adequately explain it myself. When your whole world is shaking you try to find something to hold on to find stability, a focus. In the aftermath of staring my own mortality in the face, he was that for me. Solid._**

 ** _I watched Elvis and Bones die in similar circumstances. I should have died. Living in the moment, seeking the physicality of a connecting with someone was, I think, me trying to find something life affirming. I went to his room that night because I thought 'we' was what we both need. Maybe in that moment it was true._**

 ** _It certainly wasn't afterwards. But that's the problem with waking up and coming back to the reality of life. There are consequences. Charlie saw that straight away. I was so screwed up by that point it took me longer to figure it out, but we both came to the same conclusions and had to pick up the pieces in the aftermath._**

 ** _Charlie never shared details of why you two ended, beyond that he couldn't function at home when we were trapped together in the jungle in Belize._**

 ** _I've had a lot of time to consider what should have happened after he made that confession. I should have done my job and reported it and he should have done his and made sure that we never served together after Elvis died._**

 ** _That's easy to say looking backwards. Not so easy in the moment. We were both struggling and two people drowning can't help each other swim, so we pulled each other under instead._**

 ** _I found him in his office on the day you both ended things. He was devasted and trying to hide it. Well, you know better than me how he would have been. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I was sure that things were over between you both before I let anything progress between us but I also saw how losing you destroyed him even while we were pretending getting together might fix the broken parts of both our lives. It's not much of a defence, but it's still true._**

 ** _I don't know if I contributed to things breaking down between you, but I'll say with complete honesty that I'm sorry if I did, and for everything that followed after. I know I tried to say it before and you said it didn't mean anything to you. I understand that, but I still mean it all the same._**

 ** _I'm not sure why you first emailed me and won't ever know if you found what you needed in these emails. Only you could answer that._**

 ** _I'm trying to build a new life now. To leave past mistakes where they should be, in the past. I hope you are, too. Hopefully together but perhaps not because life isn't always clean like that, but my hopes for you both are still there, for what they are worth._**

 ** _Georgie._**

After reading it, Molly laid her phone down and got up silently and left the room, letting her feet tread the familiar path to her parent's room and the side of their bed.

Belinda woke to the sound of the familiar squeaking hinges of her bedroom door that Dave had never, in years of asking, managed to get around to fixing.

Rolling to her side to face the door, she tracked the small, silent figure of Molly in the limited light from the street lights outside that escaped around the edges of the curtains.

"Mols, you alright?" she said, her voice a low whisper.

"I'm fine." Molly replied in a quiet voice that wasn't altogether steady as Belinda studied her eldest daughter silently in the blanketing semi dark of the bedroom.

Wordlessly, Belinda flipped the edge of the quilt back, and Molly climbed into the bed and into her mother's arms because sometimes a hug was worth more than words.

 **ooOOoo**

On the home stretch of a nightshift, Molly stretched her back out with a satisfied groan, before turning back to her task of setting up the drugs trolley for the incoming day shift staff who taking part in the morning handover meeting. Pay back for swapping shifts to be able to go visit her mother had been to return to a run of nightshift on half a day's restless sleep and she was feeling it now.

Contemplating the countdown to her being able to say hello to her bed again, Molly ran through the drugs control checklist for the first time, signing at the bottom of the form as voice whisper yelled into her ear, "Corporal James as I live and breathe."

"Jesus, Jacs, you scared the daylights outta me." Molly said, turning around to find Jackie, obnoxiously bright as a button and energizer bunny level grinning.

"Missed you last night and you don't write, you don't call."

"What are you on about you, mad cow." Molly said with a tired grin.

"Galivanting off to London, leaving the rest of us working for days and days." Jackie said, laying it on thick with the long-suffering tone. "Being an outrageous stop out who doesn't phone or Snapchat!"

"I was away for two nights."

"Exactly."

"Bit different when it was you off to Amsterdam with Matt for the weekend, wasn't it?"

"Totally different. A dirty weekend, by its definition, infers that I shouldn't, by way of being busy being dirty, have been in touch. You had no such excuse. Unless you have something to report?"

Molly's raised eyebrows in replied said it all. "Exactly what do you think I was up to this weekend? Trawling for trouser?"

"Sense of humour transplant needed there, Mols?"

"Yeah, I think it finally left me about hour ten, when my feet went numb." Molly replied, stretching her back out again with a groan. "I cream-crackered. No word of a lie."

"James!" They both turned towards the Sergeant calling Molly's name. "You can head off now. Ashton, don't you have somewhere else to be?"

"I've been sent to pick up some records from A&E, Staff." Jackie replied, lying confidently.

"You're two floors too high up for that task, Corporal. See you tonight, James."

"Thanks, Staff." Molly replied, turning back to Jackie. "Got time to walk me to the car. It's sort of on the way to A&E… depending on which way you walk."

"Thought you'd never ask." Jackie said, as they headed towards Molly's locker.

"So, how'd it go?"

"Awkward as hell, then easy in the end. It involved gin."

Jackie grinned. "I love your Mum on gin, she's hilarious."

"More for me than her." Molly said with a grimace. "Liquid courage."

"That bad?"

"It was a relief, in the end. It all just came out. There were some tears…both of us. Mum just gave me a hug. Said she as there if I needed her. Said she hoped we managed to work it out one way or another."

"I always thought she'd be team Major James."

"He's her favourite, of all our significant others. Not that she'd admit it. Packed me off with her photo albums. Said I'm to look through them and try to remember what we lost."

Jackie's eyebrows lifted questioningly, fully aware, as she was that Molly had disposed of all such photographic reminders of her marriage with ruthless efficiency when she left her marital home in Bath.

"And your response was?"

"A strong no thank you. She sneaked them into my bag anyway. I found them last night."

"Where are they now."

"Still in my bag at the back of my wardrobe."

"Well that's progress on wheelie bin, but you know you can't just hide them and forget about it, don't you?" Jackie scolded gently.

"Yeah I now. Avoidance, and all that. What would Dr Sinclair have to say, etc, bla, bla, bla. I don't need the telling off. I know I should be dealing with it… and I will when I'm not so tired I can barely see straight."

"Long night?"

"Normal, but I didn't sleep that well. Couldn't shut my brain up."

"Any news for me?" Molly asked as they passed through the main entrance and starting walking towards the carpark

"Actually yes, and it's about your favourite patient."

"Tommo? How's he doing?"

"Much better, I think. He's had a mystery visitor, twice now. Older chap."

"Be his Grandfather, no?"

"Apparently not. Whoever he is, he seems to have got through to him the way his family and the Army Shrink's not managed."

"How so?"

"Improved mood, engaging with his physical therapy. It's all in his notes, I'm not the only staff member to see it."

"It's early days, but that's fantastic. Are you sure it's no somebody from his family?"

"Yes. Definitely, military though. Can tell that just with the way he holds himself. You know what I mean... or maybe ex-Army, since he has a fairly pronounced limp."

"Wounded colleague?"

"Maybe, but he was older. Might be retired out."

"Don't suppose it matter so long as they're helping with what's going on in his head. Be nice if it helped out his wife."

"That's the thing, he was back yesterday with his wife or partner, and she and Nicole went off with the baby, tight as you like. That baby by the way, beyond adorable."

Molly yawned widely as they approached her car.

"How'd you leave it with your parents?"

"They're like boxers. Both in their corners trying to out stubborn each other right now. It's a mess."

"But it's their mess. You might be best to leave them to it."

"Never going to be that simple with my family, is it."

Jackie pulled Molly into a hug. "Try to get a better kip today. I made sure there was a loaf and milk in the fridge for you."

"You're a goddess."

"I try." Jackie said with, taking a half bow as Molly laughed. "Matt is coming down this afternoon. Weather should be good. If you can manage to get up a bit earlier, he's promised some BBQ before you have to be back on shift."

"That sounds amazing."

"Great. We'll see you later."

 **ooOOoo**

Matt arrived later that afternoon. He let himself in with his key, dropping his duffle bag onto the floor in the hall.

"Jacs! Molly!" Matt shouted, craning to see around the turn in the stairs to the upper floor when he couldn't see anyone in the kitchen.

"Out here." Molly called. "Good drive?"

He turned, following the sound of her voice to the back of the house and out through the kitchen door into their small courtyard garden. Molly was sitting under a green garden parasol at a wooden garden table, with various photo albums spread out on the table top in front of her.

"Got a bit sticky at Banbury, but could have been worse. Where's Jacs?"

"Tesco." Molly pointed towards the dusty BBQ Jacs had brought up from the cellar. "She's off to get supplies. I was promised you and BBQ but one day of good weather and she's decided she's Gordon Ramsey."

Matt laughed at the disgusted look on Molly's face at the thought of raw meat, open flame, and Jackie's cooking.

"It's fine. I'll manage the grill for you both." Matt said with a grin, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "You keep my supplied with beer and I'll make sure nothing raw ends up on your plate."

Leaning over to see better, he was surprised to find one of the albums opened to a picture of Molly in a wedding dress with Major James standing beside her on the steps of a hotel. He lifted his eyes to Molly.

"I know, I was as surprised to see these again as you were. My mum kept them. We got talking about Charles and stuff this visit, and she reminded me she had them. Well, hid them in my bag, is more like it."

"Taking a trip down memory lane then?"

"Mum was right. I needed to do this. It doesn't sting the way I thought it would to look at them again. Got me thinking actually."

Molly turned both albums around to face Matt.

Molly pointed at a photo of Major James, herself and an Italian looking guy sitting on a sofa. They were all leaning into each other to fit into the picture. Molly was in the middle with her husband and the other guy's arms around her like bookends. Everyone was grinning towards the camera.

"My parents' house, New Years before Elvis died." Molly said, running her fingers over the smiling faces in the picture. "Elvis was always the life and soul of the party. Spent the whole night flirting outrageously with my Mum. He was a little devil for that. She loved it."

"You look like you were having fun."

"It was a great night. So rare for all of us to be off and available just to have a night out together on a special occasion. I still miss him, you know. I mean, he was Charles' best friend, but he was like a big brother to me. Drove me nuts and the bleedin' time, but I love him to bits."

"Look." Molly said, turning several pages of the album over to a similar group photo on a different sofa, Major James, Molly and an older lady sitting by an open fire with a very formal looking Christmas tree lite up and decorated in the background.

Everyone in the photo was smiling, as you might expect in a family Christmas snap, but what drew Matts attention was fixed almost, false smile on Major James' face. Matt looked between the two pictures, comparing one to the other and could clearly see the strain on the markedly thinner face of Molly's estranged husband.

"This was taken at his parents the Christmas after…" Molly's voice hitched as she swallowed passed a lump in her throat. Matt put his arm reassuringly around her shoulder.

"You see it, too, don't you? That's how he was after Elvis died. Present but not really there anymore. All the life in him from this moment" –Molly touch the photo with Elvis in it– "to this moment is gone. Like somebody switched a light off in him somehow.

"This was taken maybe four months after Elvis died, and a bit before the problems between us really started. It seems so obvious now, looking at these pictures. He was struggling, even then and he was doing his damnedest to hide it from me."

"He looks worn, older somehow." Matt said, picking his words carefully.

"Losing Elvis, broke him and us ultimately. They were close as brothers."

Matt lifted his arm, with a smile, and Molly leaned in to tuck in to his side, gratefully receiving his quiet affection.

"Loss changes even the strongest of people."

"Death divides but memory clings." Molly murmured.

"That's a bit of a heavy sentiment for you, Molly James."

"On basic, when we went to France to visit the war graves. It was written on one of the war graves. Stuck with me, but I never really thought of it before until now. That's what happened with us, wasn't it? Elvis' death divided us but the memories still cling."

Matt looked down on Molly with worried eyes, until, in front of him she seemed to mentally give herself something of a shake as she straightened, forcing a smile.

"Sorry, for letting things get a bit heavy. It's been a bit of a long weekend."

"I'd heard. No resolution with your parents then."

"Nope, still verbal daggers and slamming doors."

"Hello! That your bag I about broke my leg on in the hall, Matthew Geddings?" Jackie yelled from the kitchen as she dumped several carrier bags on to the kitchen counter with the distinct sound of glass bottles clinking together giving a clue to the nature of her purchases.

"Well," Matt said, slapping his hands onto his thighs before standing up. "Look like our evenings supplies have arrived. Glass of something for you?"

"Sure, why not." Molly said. "Fruit juice please, living the high life as usual. I'm back on shift tonight."

"Jackie said as much."

"Matt?" Jackie called.

"Coming, hold your horses, woman!"

Matt squeezed Molly's shoulder. "You sure you're okay?"

"As long as you do the cooking, I'm fine." Molly joked, then more seriously. "I promise, I'm fine. Go say hello to your girlfriend before she comes looking for you."

Molly gave them a couple of minutes together to say hello and to gather her own thoughts, before heading into the kitchen to find Matt loading food into the fridge while Jackie poured out some drinks.

"Bought half of Tesco then?"

"Nope, just enough." Jackie said, handing a glass to Molly

"Righty-ho, chief Geddings. I'm hungry enough to eat a scabby horse." Jackie said, stepping into Matts arms, pressing a kiss to his smiling lips and then taking a respectable sized swig from her wine glass. "So, chop, chop."

"What do you want first," Matt asked. "Burger, kebabs. Seems you've bought both?"

"Well both, obviously. Maybe with a bit of the salad bits I bought as well. Molly, what do you want?" Jackie asked, turning to find Molly looking at photo albums in her hand as though mesmerised.

"Either, both. Doesn't matter. Look, I'm just gonna put these away and I've got quick call to make. Back in a bit." she said, heading off.

"Something I said?" Matt, said.

"Nah, nothing to worry about." Jackie said, looping her arms around Matt's neck affectionately. "She'll either be calling he who shall remain nameless or her mum. Now where's my _food?_ I'm wasting away here."

 **ooOOoo**

Middle of the day for everyone else was the middle of the day Molly as she woke up to the sound of her mobile phone blaring out _Wake Me Up Before You Go, Go!_ and the realised that Jackie had been messing around with her ring tone, yet again.

"Fuck sake, Jacs."

Grabbing the phone in the dark of her room, she raised it to her ear while dragging her tangled hair off her face.

"Hello?"

"Mols, that you?" Dave asked, sounding uncertain.

"Since you called my mobile, be a bit weird if it was anyone else, Dad." Molly grumbled, dragging herself upright against her pillows. "What do you want?"

"There's no need to be such a grumpy cow."

"I'm on nightshift. Remember, I told you. You woke me up. That's plenty reason to be grumpy."

"Ahh, right, sorry I forgot."

Molly sighed, trying to rein in her temper. "Yeah… Look, its fine… and sorry, I shouldn't have snapped."

"This thing with you Mum. It can't go on. I'm having to crash on your Nan's sofa and the old bag is taking every chance to turn the knife."

"I agree, it shouldn't go on."

"That's my girl, knew you'd see sense. So, you'll speak to your mother?"

"Already done, mate. I'm on her side."

"You saw what she was like last weekend, yelling and slamming doors and that."

"You turned up asking if she'd done laundry for you."

"Yeah, I'd ran out of clean stuff. What else was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know. Let's see. Cleaned your own clothes maybe. Or, wait, yes. Done what she bleedin' asked and done something about getting a job. Then you'd been back at home, maybe even with some clean y-fronts as bonus."

"Mols, come on. You know it ain't that easy."

"Actually, I don't. You're wasting your time looking for sympathy here."

"Like that is it?"

"Yeah, exactly like that."

"Might have known…"

"I'm hanging up now."

"…third member of the bloody coven..."

"I need to sleep."

"… and another hand to shove the knife…"

"Maybe you need to get a job so you won't have time to wake up people who do!"

"…into a man who's already on his bleedin' knees–."

Molly cut her dad off mid rant by ending the call before put her phone aside and rolling over to bellow, "FUCK!" into her cushion as her phone sound with a text notification which Molly knew, without looking would be from Dave trying to continue the argument.

Grabbing her phone up again, the put it into airplane mode, and rolled over onto her side and tried to get back to sleep.

Two hours of drifting between fitful dozing being wide awake, Molly finally gave up. Opting to get up and go for a ran to pound out her frustration on the scenic paths of Sutton Park before she called Charles from her usual park bench.

 **ooOOoo**

Charles was a patient audience of one as Molly vented about her conversation with Dave.

"He woke me in the middle of the night to tell me I had to talk some sense into my mother."

"And you said?"

"Told him to get a job then he wouldn't have time to wake up people who did. Hung up on him after that."

"Molly."

"Don't Molly me, Charles. I've been living with his bullshit my whole life. He knows what he has to do. It's not difficult; he's not stupid. Has some stupid ideas but he's not stupid. That's the most frustrating part of all of this. My Mum has put up with this too long and me and the kids along for the ride. Now she's finally had enough. All he has to do is step-up, and all he can think to do is whine to anyone who he thinks will listen." Molly ranted. Her words merging into an anger rush of sound that ended with a big breath and a pinched with frustration expression on her pretty face.

"I think it might be bit more complicated than that." Charles said gently. "I know he's been a bit of an arse-hole in the past."

"A bit! Understatement of the century right there, mate!"

"Maybe," Charles said soothingly, but having to work hard to hide his smirk because he found her rather inappropriately adorable in her anger. She was usual so guarded when they'd spoken recently, almost shutdown. Seeing her like this. Fired up and spitting with temper like a provoked kitten was a glimpse of the Molly he'd lost.

"It's never that black and white though is it? Look, Molly, I'm not trying to take sides but Dave is as human as the next man. With all the fragility and failures that come with it."

Molly sighed, running her hands through her hair and tucking the loose strands behind her ears. On one hand, she understood there was a strong ring of truth to Charles' words on the other hand, her annoyance at the situation was still on the simmer.

"You're ruining my rage, Charles."

"I'm trying to give you the other side of situation." he said, smiling. "It's up to you if you want to hear it."

"Mr reasonable, huh?"

"I've been called worse." he said, poking gentle fun at himself, and it was Molly turn to smirk, remembering some of the more colourful names her Unit had used to refer to him after a 10K tab in full kit. How his ears would burn if he'd known the worst of it.

"He's scared. I know that's what you're getting at."

"Do you want me to try to speak to him?" he said, then frown at the slightly confused expression on Molly's face. "Don't look so surprised, I used to speak to him pretty regularly. Especially when you were away on tour. He's part of your family, I wanted to have a connection with them."

"Why? I mean, don't get me wrong. I understand you talking to my Mum, you always were her favourite, but my Dad… Can't imagine you'd have much to say to each be beyond his views on how life done him wrong before he tapped you for beer money."

"You're maybe a tad unfair. Dave has faults but he loves family. Always had the best stories about you when you were little and he's very proud of all you've achieved."

Molly's expression remained sceptical.

"I concede, outside of his _less_ than desirable moments."

"Mum used to say, he wasn't always a dickhead."

Charles made a humming noise in agreement. "We're all just human in the end."

"You said that already, old man."

"Thirty-two is not old, Molly James."

"Joking aside, he needs to do something. Being scared doesn't justify him not stepping up and facing it. My mum is serious this time." Molly shifted in her seat with nervous energy, looking down at her hands still trying to analysis quite why she was so unsettled by this situation with her parents which was hardly new behaviour.

"You seem upset." Charles said gently, eyes warm. "More than I'd expect from your parents having a tiff."

"Tiff? Is that what it's called in polite circles?" Molly said with a laugh that very much lacked humour. "World War Three is what I'd call it."

"It's not unusual for them, is all I'm trying to say, and I don't like seeing you so distressed over something you have no control of."

"It's different this time. I think she's actually had enough. I know it's not my fault or anything, but just worried about the effects on the kids and stuff if it all goes properly to shit."

There nothing you can do, Molly."

"I know!" Molly said, slightly sharper than she meant, then rushed to explain why, anxiousness clear in her voice. "I'm sorry, I'm snapping. It's just the idea of being part of a broken home as well as a broken marriage is really doing my nut in."

Two seconds after the hastily spoken words were out of her mouth, she regretted them, and it showed on her face clear as if the words were written in large letters.

Her eyes flicked to his two seconds after she realised what she said, like she was expected him to break, or to be facing some other emotional fall out from him made Charles annoyed at himself.

"Sorry–I… that was too… I was too blunt."

"Doesn't making it any less than the truth. You don't have to obscure the truth about our situation for my benefit. I won't break hearing the truth from you. What we had is _fractured_."

"I shouldn't have said it like that." Molly said in small voice.

"I promise you nothing but total honest. You're giving me the same back."

"I don't always think before I speak, you know that. I could have been less direct. I didn't mean to be hurtful."

"I don't want you to sensor your words around me. If anything, I need you to be more direct with me. Avoidance didn't end well for us, or more honestly _me_ before. I want us to build something new. We both need to be ourselves for that to work."

"Is that what we're doing." she said, her voice quiet, careful. "Building something new?"

Though it had never been her intention, she could see the moment when the meaning of her question both hit him and, hurt him, in the tightening of the muscles along his jaw and the pulling back of his shoulders and head as he sat further back in his chair.

When he spoke, his voice was even and quiet and calm. Too calm.

"I have no expectations. All of this is about taking things at your pace and in whatever direction you need."

Two thinks occurred to Molly. He was taking the blame for their split on his shoulders wholly, just as she had herself, and that both approaches would and had ultimately failed.

She meant what she said to Dr Sinclair weeks ago. That she had, finally, come to realise that it hadn't been her job to fix Charles, even though she her hardest to do exactly that, to the point of breaking her heart each and every time she failed and let her own, often lacking, self-confidence slip away like oxygen draining from a room in which she'd be trapped and left trying to gasp for breath in what remained. She'd let herself suffocate to try to save him, or herself – at least the her that had been part of the partnership that had made them them– and lost him anyway.

Ultimately it had been his responsibility to ask for her and should have been her role to support. By the time he'd sought help, Molly was already gone–physically, emotional, geographically. Both too far down a road of hurt and distance to be able to turn back. Yet here they were, despite everything.

His statement that he had no expectations was a lie. Her statement that she didn't mean to be hurtful was also a lie. They both knew that.

The line from Georgie's email struck Molly in that moment. That two people drowning couldn't help each other swim, only pulled each other under. That's what they'd been doing to each other before she left. Drowning each other.

What she'd been doing since was running, and Molly was to exhausted to do it anymore.

Holding back tears, Molly laid the basic truth out in words. "You slept with Georgie."

"You left me."

"You left me first." Molly said, and her, quiet, contained accusation and truth was so heavy he felt he would crumble under the weight of it.

"I know."

"You never came back from Afghanistan. Not really."

"The man we both knew died with Elvis." he said, giving her the same, frank, painful honesty back. "And I'm never going to be that man again."

Away from pleas for forgiveness, confession of weakness or excuses, illness, explanations and all the rest. After words, too many words perhaps, what remained was both their stark statement and the striped naked truth. Nothing else mattered, ultimately.

"What is it that you want from me?"

"A chance."

"An if I can't?"

"Then I walk away. If that's what you need."

"Be cleaner, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe." Charles said softly. "Is that what you need?"

Molly wiped across her eyes. It came away wet. She took her time giving him an answer. Counting off twenty, two fast heart beats drumming away in her ears before she found the courage to say what she need to say.

"I want to stop running. I'm tired. It's exhausting. I tell Jackie, and my mum and myself that I'm talking to you again, so I'm trying. I haven't really, it's all just more of the same because keeping you away felt–feels… safer, to be honest."

"I understand and I meant what I said. I want this to move at your speed, Molly. Ultimately I want a chance to show you who I am now."

"That's not fair, either. Like you're putting it on me to know what to do next."

"I hadn't thought of it like that." Charles sighed. "Seems even my best intentions are falling flat."

Molly laughed, a rough bark of sound at the irony. "You and me both, mate. We've both ran away from our problems in the end. Even the fittest of runners has got to stop or drop at some point. Maybe that's what were both doing."

"What can I do, to make this easier…for us both?"

"Got a Tardis?"

Charles smiled, despite himself. "Unfortunately, my answer is still an indefatigable _no_."

"Maybe I need to ask you the same question, because I ain't got a Tardis either. What can I do?"

His reply was quick and precise. "Meet me. Anywhere you like. I want to spend time with you, properly. No hiding behind technology."

"Okay, I can do that."

"I'm going to my parents again on Friday. I can meet when I'm driving back."

"Coffee shop in the _Squares_ maybe?"

"You recognised that was where I was?"

He nodded. "I won't lying, realising you were so close by and still choose to phone instead of see me in person stung a tad."

"So nearly did. Chickened out in the end. Sorry."

"You've got nothing to apologise for. I've been meaning to ask you to meet a hundred times. I could never find the words. I chickened out as well. Too worried if I asked, I'd frighten you off."

"We're a pair, aren't we?"

"I think so, yes. But I like it, to be honest. Knowing were both feeling the same things is comforting in an odd way. A sort of common ground."

"Yeah, maybe." Molly said smothering a yawn.

"You seem tired."

"I'm on nights again tonight. Bit passed by bedtime."

"You need to go?"

"Yes…" she hesitated with her next words. "I don't want to go, but I need to."

Strangely that hesitancy brought I smile to his face. "See, more common ground."

"What are you on about, you nutbar?"

His smile widened. "I just mean I don't want you to go either. Even miss you Molly brand insults."

"Now I know you're definitely losing it."

"I love you, Molly." he said, his voice suddenly serious. "Whatever else happens between us, that's never going to change."

"I love you, too. Despite everything else, that never changed."

"It was always what was right between us. I'm glad that never will change. Goodnight."

She found a smile for him surprisingly easily. "Don't you mean good morning?"

"All depends on your perspective." he replied with a smile, tugging his hand through his hair which was a sure sign that he was feeling unsure of himself.

"That's a Rupert answer if I ever heard one."

"Will you be running tomorrow?"

"Probably."

"Same park, in the evening before your shift?"

"Probably."

"So, if a chap happened to turn up, maybe in his running gear, possibly with the intention of buying a coffee and maybe a sticky bun afterwards at your park bench. Would that be okay with you?"

There was a touch of almost boyish hesitancy in his expression and in the way he looked down towards where his hands were laid flat on the surface of his desk as he spoke before lifting them back up to Molly, waiting for her answer.

"Did you arrange for someone to come and speak to that young patient I was telling you about?"

"Yes."

"Would you have told me if I hadn't work it out?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'm was just doing my job."

"For someone not in your regiment."

"For someone who needed help."

"And someone who was important to me?"

"Yes."

Molly took a big breath and came to a decision about taking a big, scary step into the unknown.

"Well, I guess you know me, never was one to say no to a sticky bun and a brew."

His answering smile was perhaps the first genuinely relaxed, response of delight that Molly had seen him make in a very long time.

"More common ground?"

"Yeah, something like that."

* * *

 _Death divides but memory clings – is an actual quote from a First World War military grave in Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery_


	18. Chapter 18

**Mood music**

 _Perfect Doesn't Last – Beth Crowley, It's A Small World – The Sweeplings, Eat Sleep Worry – Mree, Roots Before Branches – Room For Two, Rush – Lewis Capaldi_

 **Chapter Eighteen**

* * *

 _Thresholds are dangerous places, neither here nor there, and walking across one is like stepping off the edge of a cliff in the naive faith that you'll sprout wings halfway down. You can't hesitate, or doubt. You can't fear the in-between._ _ **― Alix E. Harrow**_

* * *

.

.

Molly was pounding down a tarmac path in Forrest Lane Park at a fair pace when her phone rang, interrupting the music playing through her head phones with her ring tone. She slowed a little, pulling her iPhone out of the holder on her arm and reading, 'Nan' on the screen.

Slowing to a walk, she answered, a little out of breath.

"Hey, Nan."

"Molls, is that you?"

"Dad, what are you doing calling on Nan's phone?"

"I'm out of credit, borrowed it while the dragon's havin' nap. Not sure how she's getting any sleep with that snoring. She sounds like a bleedin' jackhammer."

"Yeah, fine. Whatever. What do you need?" Molly said, with growing impatience, fully expecting another request for her to make her mother see sense and let him home.

"It's about your mother…"

"No, Dad, no! I'm not doing this. Her… you…the backwards and forwards. I want nothing to do with it."

"But Mols…"

"Fucksake, Dad. Get your shit together and leave me out of it, Okay!" Molly said, hanging up the phone with an angry sigh.

Most of her childhood had involved the Dave and Belinda drama show, and usually, it just washed over her as more of the same old same old. For some reason, this particularly drama she could not throw off and it just kept digging at her in uncomfortable ways. Molly's conclusion on the subject was she was just getting too old for her parents' shit.

 **ooOOoo**

"That you, Mols?" Belinda called, as she heard the front door open then slam closed.

Sitting in the living room, she was trying to conquer the family's never-ending pile of laundry in the certain knowledge that she would, good naturedly, fail. Hands raised folding a towel, she looked up as a bedraggled looking Molly came into the room in her running gear, squeezing water out of her sodden pony tail onto her equally sodden hoodie.

"Raining cats, dogs and a whole bleedin' zoo out there." Molly grumbled.

"I told you you'd get caught in it." Belinda said, handing the towel she had been folding to Molly who moved to perch on the arm of the chair beside her mother towelling her hair dry.

"Ta."

"Forecast is better for tomorrow. Still don't understand why you couldn't have waited."

"It's my job. Fitness is a huge thing. Never happens if I don't keep it up. Working, studying and the fact that I like sleep. There never enough time unless I plan it."

Belinda grinned, then chuckled.

"Something I said funny?"

"Kind of, just hearing you now. All serious and responsible. I'm remember the nightmare it used to be getting you out of your pit for school or work before you join the Army. It makes me laugh. You were a right mardy little madam."

"Jackie would say I still am, on a bad day."

"Maybe. Go get yourself a shower, before you end up being a mardy madam with a long drive and pneumonia. You all packed up?"

"Yeah, dropped my bags in the car before I went out ready for heading home tonight."

"Funny hearing you calling Birmingham home. Your Dad was always convinced you'd never move out of an 'E' postcode."

"He also thought I should be married and knocked up by eighteen." Molly said with an eye-roll. "Never one to lack ambition for his family, Dave Dawes."

"It just how he is." Belinda replied placidly. "Nobody's perfect."

"Says the women who chucked him out and isn't speaking to him."

"Yeah, well. You know how I feel about that situation, and he knows what he needs to do to be allowed back through the door."

"At least I'm speaking to him." Molly said with a pointed tone which made Belinda indulge in an eye-roll of her own.

"Flowers arrived for you while you were out. Freesias, beautiful. Making the kitchen smell like a garden right now."

Charles and his Friday flowers. Figured that he would be on the ball enough to remember she was staying at her parents on delivery day.

Belinda gave Molly the look she always gave Molly when the subject of Charles was on her mind. Molly's knee jerk reaction was to ask her mother to leave the subject alone, but she knew she'd opened the door again on this topic after her heart to heart with her mother last weekend. No chance she'd let her slam it closed now.

"You not going to go see them?"

Molly pulled out her phone as a distraction tactic and fiddle with her messages.

"Maybe in a minute."

"He's being very consistent." Belinda said.

"Very." Molly replied noncommittally, but low level irked by her mother's fishing. She knew she was being unfair, just a bit, well more than just a bit...

"He is trying."

"Very."

"Come on, Mols." Belinda scolded.

Molly sighed.

"I know you want a good outcome from this because you've always had soft spot for Charles, but we've got more problems that a few flowers are gonna fix."

"I don't have favourites. I like Jades boyfriend as much as Charles." Belinda protested as Molly made a snorting noise in response.

"That's why you were calling him drama-lama, amongst other things, last Christmas when they had a ding-dong. Ironic, really, since it was Jade and a bottle of prosecco, or two, that kicked the whole thing off."

"Don't you start getting snotty with me, Molly Dawes. You and Charles were good together. He loved you, properly loved you."

"I know." Molly said, understanding her mother compassion for Charles, but wishing she would let it alone. "Weren't so good at the end though."

"I know, but you were good for each other at the start. Way he used to relax whenever you came into a room, let his hair down a bit, and you used to just light up around him. It's waste, the way it ended and he seems to be trying."

"You said that already. Look, it's not as simple as few flowers, and all's fixed, is it? If it was Dad would be sitting on the end of the sofa with an opinion after he turned up with flower last weekend."

Belinda's expression was mutinous. "Maybe if he looked into the chances of getting a job at the garage instead buy their crappy flowers and rocking up to my door with them and more empty promises, he might have been sat here now."

"Like I said."

"Give me your, phone."

"Why?"

"Just give it here."

Molly hand over her iPhone with all the reluctancy of a teenager surrendering a guilt proving device to a parent.

Belinda laughed. "That expression on your mug's never changed. Fourteen or twenty-four, you still look guilty."

"What do you want it for?"

"You'll see. I'm illustrating my… whats-its-name."

"Point?"

"Yeah, that."

Belinda scrolled through her on phone for a couple of seconds. "Last message from your Dad–" she turned the phone screen towards Molly "–Dave complaining that they're changing The Black Lion into a Wetherspoons and asking about picking up clean boxers."

She fiddled with Molly's phone, then turned the screen in her direction again.

"Last message from your Charles? Asks about how works going. Tells you he looking forward to meeting you for coffee again. Tells you he loves you. That's my point, Mols."

"He's not my Charles."

"You keep telling yourself that. You are your bleedin' Nan, stubborn as the day is long. Both of you, and that's why I put the rest of the photo albums you didn't want to look at last weekend, in your bag this morning."

"How many of those bleedin' books to you have? Honestly."

"You want to know if things are over and done between you. Make yourself look at those pictures, and tell me how you feel after. Don't bother giving me the stink-eye. You know I'm–"

They both jumped as Molly's phone started ringing in Belinda's hand.

"Who's Julian?" Belinda, asked reading the name on the screen then giving Molly side-eye suspiciously. "You got a new bloke on the go?"

"Ain't got time for the one I've not got at the moment, do, I." Molly said, more than a little irritated by her mother's disapproving tone and further proof of her denied favouritism. She held her hand out for her phone.

"He's Rebecca's husband. Give it here."

"Jules? Yeah, it's Molly, what's up? Is Rebecca needing maternity leave boredom relief?" Molly said with a smile.

Hearing his response, Molly's expression straightening into one of concern instead of amusement quickly as she sat up straighter.

"Mols? Is something wrong?"

Molly held up her hand to silence her mother urgently, turning away slightly as she held the phone tighter to her ear to better hear Julian's rushed words.

"Jules, slow down, slow down… Yeah, I'm at my parents. I'm leaving now, meet you there. Forty minutes, okay?"

"The baby?"

Molly ran an agitated hand through her hair, turning back towards her mother.

"Yeah. Look, I know I said I'd stay and help with the kid after school but–"

"But you need to go?" Belinda pulled Molly into a quick hug. "Don't be daft, Go jump in the shower. Sooner you're changed, sooner you can head out."

ooOOoo

The scene that greeted Molly when she arrived at the Portland Hospital made the urgency of Julian's call more than clear as a pale faced Julian greeted her in a waiting area off of the maternity ward.

As Julian explained the circumstances around rushing them all to the hospital, Molly's eyes strayed to where Sam was sitting across the room. He was a curled-up knot of silent tension, incongruently football kit, trainers and his outside jacket tucked into the corner of a sofa with his chin resting on his knees and his eyes firmly on Molly.

"She's doing okay?" Molly asked quietly, pitching her voice low so little ears might not hear too much.

Julian spread his hands expressively, his eyes flicking shut briefly. Like he needed to collect himself.

"Her waters broke. There was blood." He said, with a heavy sigh. "They're monitoring them both."

Molly reached out, squeezing Julian's shoulder gently. "She's tough as old boots and they're in the best place."

A tight smile curved his lips briefly. "She's been barking at the nurses since we arrived."

"Sounds like Becs."

"She wants to speak to you before you take Sam. I'll go see if you're okay to see her."

"Yeah, of course. I'll be here."

Molly approached Sam, crouching down so she was on his level.

"You okay, mate?"

Brown eyes, so like his father's, met Molly's and welled with tears as he launched himself into Molly's waiting arms.

Holding him for several minutes, Molly gave him quiet support as his formerly frantic breathing eased and he relaxed the death grip he had with his arms around her neck.

"You been being a brave little man for you mum?" Molly asked softly, smoothing a hand through his curls.

It was a few seconds in coming, but the reply she'd been trying for came quick enough as Sam pulled back, wiped his face with the back of his hand and levelled Molly with a stubborn scowl.

"I'm not little."

 **ooOOoo**

Molly waited patiently for list of instruction that she knew Rebecca was bound to issue, knowing that control in this completely out of her control situation would be what her friend would need.

"Take my car. You're still on the insurance from when I was giving you lessons." Rebecca said, gripping Molly's hand tightly.

"Why? I passed my test ages ago." Molly said, referring to their former driving lessons together using Rebecca's beast of a 4x4 and still being on the insurance. Then on seeing Rebecca's scowl, rushed to soothe her earlier comment. "Not that that matters… I have my car here anyway."

"Really, that's what you're fixing on? I'm having a baby here, in case you missed the obvious, and you giving me lectures about my inadequacies as a domestic administrator aren't helping!" Rebecca snapped, before folding over her stomach with a moan. "Stop blooding arguing with me!"

"Okay, okay just breathe." Molly soothed. "I'll take your car."

"All Sammie's stuff and the present for his Gran are in the car. Jules will give you the keys."

"What about baby seat?"

"We hadn't even–" Rebecca said, voice cutting off on a sob as her eyes filled with tears. "It's too early, Molly. He's coming too early."

"Just in a hurry like his big brother. You've got this, Becs. It's gonna be okay."

Rebecca grabbed Molly up into a tight hug. "You promise?"

"I promise." Molly pulled back and held Rebecca's hand reassuringly, only to yelp loudly as Rebecca squeezed the life out of her fingers as contraction started again.

"Jesus Christ, this hurts like a bloody bastard!"

"Why does swear always sound twice as filthy in your accent?" Molly said, grinning.

"It's a talent." Rebecca said, pausing to pant heavily. "Up I want to get up."

Molly and the Midwife helped Rebecca to stand and she lean on the bed on her elbows and rocked from side to side and groaning.

"Okay, tell me what I told you to say."

"Oh, right. That this is gonna hurt but is worth it. Second time is easier than first and your body knows what it's doing." Molly ticked Rebecca's statements off on her fingers. "It will be worth it when you see the baby. You don't want an epidural–"

Rebecca let loose a huge groan. "I might be reconsidering that last one."

"Shit, Becs, let me go get a Julian."

"No, stay, rub my back, just rub my back."

Molly complied.

"I was completely full of shit when I wrote that damn list."

"Maybe?"

"What else was on it?"

"That you love Julian and you promise not the break balls too much while you're hurting."

"I never wrote that."

"Nah, that was my addition."

"Sam got a fright today, with all the panic and the driver over here. I need you to take our little man and distract him into having a fantastic time with his Granny and his Step Mum so he forgets all the nonsense he shouldn't have seen today."

"You'll meet your new baby soon, and Sam's going to have a new brother and forget all about this. You sort out the baby brother bit, and I've got the rest, okay?"

"There was blood. He saw too much."

"And it'll all be forgotten when he gets his little brother."

"Tell me I can do this."

"You can do this. I promise."

Rebecca managed a tight, one arm hug. "I've got this, don't I?"

"You've got this."

Turning, so she was half perched on the bed, Rebecca stretched out her aching back. Then wiped her wet cheeks.

"Okay, I'm ready. Go get Jules. This baby is coming whether I'm ready or not."

 **ooOOoo**

Turning off the M4 onto the M3, Molly listened radio traffic report for the route with increasing worry. The rain was lashing down, with enough wind behind it to be buffering Rebecca barn of a 4x4 from time to time. With an Amber warning of localised flooding for Devon and Cornwall and the fact that Charles' parents holiday home was in the back end of nowhere in the middle of the Dartmouth National Park, Molly was increasingly grateful the Rebecca insisted that she took her car rather than Molly much smaller Mini, but she was beginning to wonder if even that was going to be enough to survive the weather and narrow one track countries roads in the middle of this storm.

Sam had been quiet for the much of the journey, declining Molly's offer to stop for food and instead sounding like a mini version of his Dad by saying he thought they should get out of London traffic before they stopped anywhere.

A thought had been nagging at Molly since they set off, that perhaps she shouldn't be attempting this journey at all, and maybe Sam might need his Dad given the fright that he'd had. With the worsening weather, she was becoming more convinced by the minute. They were fast coming up on the turn off that would take them towards Guildford and she knew she could come off the motorway and cut across country easy enough before they got much further on.

"You alright there, mate? You're awfully quiet."

"I'm fine."

"You sure about that?" Molly said, griping the steering wheel a little tighter as spray from the wheels of an HGV she was overtaking obscured the windscreen despite the way the windscreen wipers were working overtime the clear the water. The tarmac in front of the car was a flowing sheet of water except where the car in front's tyres had cleared leaving a parallel lined path which Molly followed as she guided the car back into the inside lane.

"I'm sure." Sam replied, turning to face Molly with a brave attempt at a smile on his face. He looked so very young as so like his dad it was heart melting and breaking at the same time. Rebecca's brave little man.

"You're Mums going to be fine, you know that don't you? Everything happened in a bit of scary rush this afternoon, but she is the best place with all the Doctors and nurses to look after her and your new baby brother or sister."

Sam turned to study Molly, a very serious expression on such a young face.

"I wanted to stay with Mummy and Jules to make sure she was alright."

"I know."

"There was blood. Lots of it." He said, his sounding very small.

"You must have been scared."

He nodded solemnly.

"Having babies isn't easy. It can be messy and it can take a long time. Your mum is in the best place, you understand that, right?" Molly said, choosing her words carefully to be age appropriate while also knowing the Sam was a clever child, who would like to be talked down to by anyone, especially when he was worried about his Mum. "Your Mum just wanted to make sure that you didn't miss out on seeing Granny, or might hear or see something worrying. Do you understand?"

"I know where babies come from, Molly." Sam said with a very serious expression on his face, leaving Molly with the impression that she was now being managed by a ten-year-old. "We did all that at school and mummy told me all about it."

"Well, that's good then."

"Findlay also showed us a YouTube video." Sam pulled screwed up his face. "He said that's what it was like when his little sister was born."

"Like what?"

"Wet and noisy and icky. Findlay said."

"Well, if Findlay said it was like that."

"Findlay says lots of stupid stuff, I told him I didn't believe him. That's why he showed us the video on his phone. I believe him then." Sam huffed out a big sigh and said very solemnly. "I'm glad I'm not a girl."

Molly struggled not to smile in the face of his terribly serious expression. He was such an old soul sometimes.

"Would it have been like that if you had a baby with Daddy?"

"I giving birth is pretty much the same for everyone, Sammie." Molly said, changing lanes to avoid a puddle. "Talking about your, Dad. How about we give him a call and let him know where you are?

"Just pick his name from the contacts on my phone." Molly said, nodding to where her phone was sitting in a cradle on the dashboard, the screen tracking their progress on a map app.

Sam rolled his big brown eyes at Molly. "You don't need to do that. Hey Siri, call Daddy."

"I don't have anyone in your contacts with that name." replied the phone.

Molly stuck her tongue out at Sam cheekily. "Not so clever there, clever clogs. I don't call him Daddy, do I?"

Sam threw up his hands dramatically with all the mock outrage of a ten-year-old. "This is why I need my own phone. Hey Siri, call Charles."

"Calling Charles James, husband." the phone replied, and Sam gave Molly a curious look, as though he had a question, but didn't quite know how to ask it.

Charles' voicemail picked up several seconds later, and Sam hung up the phone.

"Call Brains for me, mate. He'll know where you're Dad's at."

"You know somebody called Brains?"

"Yeah, watch. Hey Siri, call Brains."

Sam giggled as the phone said, "Calling Brains Wiggerty."

"He's actually called Harry, but we won't hold that against him, ehh?"

"Dawesey, how are you doing on this lovely day for ducks." Brains answered cheerfully.

"Hey, Brains, just in the car with Sam, and you're on handsfree, so little ears and all that."

"I'm not little." Sam replied with a snort of disgust.

"Okay them, what can I do for you?"

"I was trying to track down Charles. His mobile is going to voicemail."

"Not that surprising. He's out on manoeuvres on Salisbury Plains with the Officer Cadets and fifty odd poor sod– eh, soldiers doing their Stage Two."

"In this weather, that's gonna be miserable."

"British Army for you. Not happy unless they're keeping us busy being wet and miserable."

"Builds moral fibre and such like." Molly said laughing.

"I'm sure that's what Major James said at parade this morning. Grinning like a Cheshire cat at the same time, mind."

"Sounds like him. No reason to think he doesn't have his mobile on him?"

"Nah. Saw him with it this morning. Probably just out of range. I can get a message to him through the Scaley Operator at the Command Tent, if you want."

"It's not super urgent. Can you just let him know I've collected Sam because his mums gone into labour? We're heading to his parents' place at Widecombe. I think he was due there tonight or tomorrow, one or the other. He'll know what I'm on about."

"No problem, Dawesey. I'll let him know when he gets back from drowning the future one pip wonders."

"Don't let him catch you calling them that."

"As if. You got a long drive?"

"Yeah. It's a bit grim and slow going, but we'll get there. I'll stop for the night somewhere if it gets too hairy."

"On your mobile otherwise?"

"He can call me if he needs to."

"Sure. I'll let him know. Drive carefully."

"Will do, Brains. Bye!"

"Right, that's that then. You sure you don't want me to take you to your Dad's? It's closer than your Grandparents."

"No, thank you. I have a present for Granny's birthday, and she was already disappointed that you couldn't be there this weekend." Sam smiled at Molly broadly. "Now you can, so it's all perfect."

"There's that, I guess. Fine, we'll bash on." Molly compared the time on dashboard clock to the darkness outside and sighed. "It's gonna be dark by the time we get there at this rate, not that it isn't dark at the moment. You want to stop for some food?"

"Maybe later."

"Okay, service station pizza in a while coming up."

Sam pulled a face.

"No? Expresso and a doughnut?"

He giggled.

"Burger King?"

"Yes, please with a strawberry milkshake and an ice-cream, please."

"I think we can manage all that."

 **ooOOoo**

One hour later and several hours earlier than scheduled, Charles walked passed Brain's desk, removing his water proof coat as he walked.

Brains looked up from his computer screen with a respectful nod and clearly stated, "Sir. Back early?"

"Yes. Complete wash out. Bit much, even for me. Travel back was a bit of challenge." Charles said with a wry grin as Brains slid a pile of mail and folders towards him across his desk. "Any messages?"

"Molly called."

Charles' head jerked up, looking away from the paperwork he'd been thumbing though and trying not to let the way his heart was suddenly thumping in his chest show on his otherwise carefully expressionless face.

"Said to let you know she'd picked up Sam because his mum had gone into labour."

"She's early, I hope everything is okay." Charles looked at his watch, considering the time it would take to drive down to London. "If I left now, I can beat the rush hour. Did she say if she was taking him back to her parents' place or Rebecca's house?"

"Neither. She was in the car driving when she called. Said to tell you that she was taking him to your parents place in some place called Widecombe."

"In this weather? She's talking about going to their holiday house in the arse end of nowhere down single lane roads and a long farm track up the side of a bloody hill. It's my mother's birthday this weekend so they were having a get together. They called me earlier to say they're staying in Bath because of the weathering warning."

"Maybe they called Molly too?"

"Doubtful, she was never planning to come this weekend. I was supposed to be driving up with Sam today." Charles said as he pulled his mobile out of his pocket with a worried frown and dialled Molly's mobile.

"She'll probably stop somewhere, said as much when she was one the phone."

"Voicemail, damn." He tried dialling again and got the same result. "Look, I'm going to head out there. Hopefully be able to get a hold of her before she hits worse of the rural roads and divert them to my parents in Bath. Can you get the motor pool on the phone and see if they have a Landy available, the only sort of vehicle that going to manage on those roads in this weather, I'll go and grab my stuff out of my car?"

"She said she'd stop for the night if it got too bad."

"Sam will want to get to his Granny's and if I know Molly, she'll do her best for him especially if he's worried about his mum and I don't like her chances on those roads in her little car."

 **ooOOoo**

Molly stopped at the Services on A303 at Amesbury, with Molly managing to park fairly close to the entrance, even though the run from car to the door left them both with damp hair.

Giving them a solid hour to stop and stretch, Molly got Sam his requested Burger King and tried to call the house phone at Widecombe without success but didn't worry about it particularly. The continuing rain was more of a concern, checking with the traffic screens at the services, the A303 was open with no delays, so she decided to bash on bolstered by Sam's happy chattering about how excited he was to see his Grandparents and pass on his present to his Granny.

She phoned her mum before she left to explain why she wouldn't be home tonight, then headed out back out onto the road.

They were the wrong side of Honiton, when Sam, who had been previously happily engrossed in some sort of driving game on her phone, said, "Oh."

"What's the matter, mate?"

"Phone batteries dead."

"That's no problem, have look in my bag for the charger cable."

Sam rifled around in her handbag for a couple of seconds. "Nope." He said, popping the 'p'. "Not in here"

"Is that a Sam, it is in there but I can't be bothered looking, is it I really not in there?"

Then she remembered. It had been in there and now wasn't, due to the fact she'd been staying the night in Lewisham and it was currently plugged into the socket in her old bedroom.

"No, it's definitely not in there."

"Damn, sorry, Sam, you're right I just remembered. Charging cables at home. Does your mum maybe have one in the car?"

"Mum has an android. It wouldn't fit."

"I guess we'll just need to wing it without GPS."

Sam rolled his eyes at her again. "Or you could use the car's GPS." He pushed some buttons on the stereo, and a map appeared. "See."

"Okay smart fart. Set it up then."

 **ooOOoo**

Driving down the A303, Charles tried Molly's number again and got her voicemail, again. He hung up with a sigh and tried to convince himself that there was nothing to worry about, even if it was very unlike her to not answer her phone at some point through the course of the last couple of hours, he' been driving.

 **ooOOoo**

An hour later, Molly turned off the winding country lane they'd been navigating on full beam onto the stone track was the last leg of their journey to the cottage. The rain hadn't let up, horizontal the whole way with wind behind it, and they had been dodging fallen branches and puddles the whole way down the high-hedged lanes.

It was pitch dark now, and felt even dark since they were in the middle of countryside and miles away from any form of artificial lighting except that provided by the car as they bumped and jostled down the lane following it's winding path up the side of the hill the house sat on. Over a brow of one hill and down into a dip, Molly could feel how tired she was as she strained to see the edges of the track through the lashing rain. Then she slammed on the brakes with a curse whispered under her breath.

Sam turned to face her, then stretch up in his seat, looking over the long bonnet of the car to the ford which bisected the track they were travelling on. Usually a shallow flow of water beside a wooden foot bridge, it was now a rushing torrent.

"Oh." He said. "I'd forgotten about that."

"Yeah, me too,"

Molly chewed on her lip considering her options. The house wasn't actually that far ahead. A couple of hundred metres further up the track, but would get soaked doing the walk. The water looked deep and would have been a definite no in her own small car, but Rebecca's higher standing 4x4 might be fine.

"I'm not sure what to do, Sammie. Take the car through or walk."

Sam looked at the water and back to Molly practically bouncing on his seat with excitement. "Gun it, Clarkson!"

"Hold you horses there, mini Stig. For one, who's been letting you watch Top Gear, because I know your mother's not going to be on board with that, and for two, we have no idea how deep that water is."

"Findlay showed me on YouTube."

"Right, might have guessed that one. This is a bleedin' expensive car if I break something. Maybe I should just reverse and we can find a hotel." Molly said, looking over her shoulder and trying to judge the difficulty of reverse turning the large 4x4 on the narrow lane.

Sam pointed to the house with a determined finger. "The lights are on in the house, which means Granny and Pop made it, and their car is w-a-y smaller and lower than this one. This has four-wheel drive; it's meant for stuff like this."

"You sound very confident for some with no driving license."

Sam rolled his eyes. "You know I'm right about Pop's car."

Molly considered his determined expression for a second. Looking towards the lights on at the house in the distance.

"You might have a point there. "She put the car into gear and the car rolled forward cautiously slowly into the water, shuddered gently at the tug of water against the tyres and shifting gravel underneath as it straightened, leaving the slight downward slope of the tarmac road to the level surface of the ford.

"Nothing's going to happen, you a worry too much!"

"Sure, but if something _does_ happen. Then this was _all_ your idea and you're telling you're telling your Mo–"

The car engine stuttered and stopped suddenly, leaving a ringing silence behind, except for the sound of rushing water. Sam turned to Molly with a _you've gone and done it now_ expression on his face which, she suspected, might well matched her own.


End file.
